THE RESTORATION OF BIAFRA NATION

    The assailants, from a nearby air base, fled after their attack was met with heavy shelling and gunfire from the presidential guard unit, three other security sources said, adding that a search was ongoing. The sources all requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to media.   They did not comment on the whereabouts of president-elect Mohamed Bazoum, who is due to be sworn in on Friday after an election victory disputed by his opponent Mahamane Ousmane. President Mahamadou Issoufou is stepping down after two five-year terms.   The president’s office shared photos on Twitter of Issoufou presiding over the swearing-in ceremony of two new members of the constitutional court on Wednesday morning. Former U.S. Sahel envoy J. Peter Pham earlier tweeted that both the president and president-elect were safe. The government of Niger was not immediately available to comment.       There have been growing attacks by Islamist m...

  Nigeria’s Pernicious Drivers of Ethno-Religious Conflict Summary Nigeria’s long-running “indigene-settler” conflict in and around Jos, Plateau State has escalated in recent years and may spread to other ethnically mixed regions of the country, heightening instability. Navigating such inter-communal fault lines is a common challenge for many African societies that requires looking past symptoms to address systemic drivers. In Nigeria, this will entail measures that directly mitigate violence as well as realize constitutional reform. Highlights Nigeria’s statutory framework grants local officials the authority to extend or deny basic rights to citizens in their jurisdictions, thereby creating incentives for the politicization of ethnicity and escalating intercommunal violence. Ineffective state responses to repeated ethnic clashes have highlighted a lack of political will to address this violence. While currently concentrated in central Nigeria, the systemic drivers...

  Security Sector Violence against Civilians Police and military violence against civilians are a persistent impediment to sustainable peace in Nigeria. In 2020, nationwide #EndSARS protests, led by young people, transcended the country’s religious, ethnic, and political divides and demanded an end to police abuses, particularly the dissolution of the unaccountable Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS). This division of the national police force was originally set up to address the problem of organized criminal gangs across the country. Over time, however, FSARS became known for extorting Nigerian citizens and committing human rights abuses. In a vivid illustration of this, security forces opened fire on #EndSARS protesters in October 2020 to shut down marches and sit-downs across the country.   While FSARS has been in the spotlight recently, Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) has regularly harassed and detained journalists with impunity, including invad...