It is difficult to know how much public money was spent for political purposes during this period. The lack of transparency in official expenditures, such as from Nigeria’s Excess Crude Account, creates the appearance that state resources could easily be used on behalf of incumbents. For example, the Excess Crude Account dropped from about $20 billion (in U.S. dollars) when Yar’Adua assumed the presidency in 2007 to $3 billion when Jonathan became “acting president,” then rose to approximately $5 billion. There has been little credible explanation for the fluctuations. According to the central bank, foreign reserves fell from $34.6 billion in 2010 to $30.86 billion in 2011. They have since recovered to $32.8 billion. (Throughout this period, oil prices have been high.)

The April 2011 elections, despite being hailed by international elections observers as better than the 2007 “election-like event,” appear to have been rigged strategically in certain places to ensure Goodluck Jonathan’s victory. To avoid a runoff, he needed a countrywide plurality of total ballots cast and at least 25 percent of the vote in two-thirds of the country’s thirty-six states. In the Christian Southeast, Jonathan’s vote totals were in the range of 97–99 percent. This guaranteed that he met the first requirement. Twenty-six of the thirty-six governors were from the ruling PDP, and governors were deeply involved in the conduct of the elections. Two or three governors in the North likely ensured that Jonathan received more than 25 percent of the vote in their states, thereby meeting the second requirement. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the ostensibly independent body that conducts elections, reported Jonathan’s share of the vote in Sokoto—Buhari’s home state—as 35 percent; in Gombe, 38.5 percent; and in Jigawa, 38.7 percent. These numbers seem high for the sharia heartland.

While the president appoints the chair of the INEC, his authority over the state electoral commissioners is limited; they are often beholden to the governors. Jonathan appointed Attahiru Jega, an American-educated academic known for his integrity, as INEC chair. Under Jega’s leadership, the registration and voting processes improved, though they remained far from perfect. In more places than in the past, polling stations opened, ballots were available and security-service intimidation declined. However, in other areas it is widely believed that registration numbers were inflated, ballot boxes were stuffed and vote tabulation was manipulated sufficiently to ensure Jonathan’s victory without a runoff. If the mechanics at the polling places in 2011 were an improvement, the outcome of the elections remained elite business as usual, albeit with more sophisticated methods than in the past.

Not surprisingly, in the southern half of the country people generally believed the election was credible and accepted Jonathan’s victory. But in the predominantly Muslim North, Jonathan’s national victory was widely viewed as fraudulent. The announcement of his victory sparked three days of riots in northern cities in which at least one thousand people were killed, making the 2011 elections the bloodiest in Nigeria’s history. The private houses of the sultan of Sokoto and the emirs of Kano and Zaria were destroyed because they had supported Jonathan. What started as protests against the largely Muslim political establishment, which was believed to have sold out to Jonathan, degenerated into ethnic and religious violence. Today, many in the North continue to see the elections as lacking legitimacy.

The Abuja government appointed a panel to investigate the causes of the violence, informally called the Lemu Panel after its chairman, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu, a prominent retired Islamic judge. The text of the report has not been made public, but Chairman Lemu’s public comments on the report amount to an indirect indictment of Nigeria’s current political economy. He concludes that the postelection violence resulted from widespread frustration with Nigeria’s poverty, corruption, insecurity and inequality, as well as with the inability of successive governments to address these issues.

NIGERIA’s VAST oil reserves underpin its economy and its dysfunctional political culture. Its oil comes from the Niger Delta and from offshore platforms in the Atlantic’s Gulf of Guinea. Though these oil reserves constitute the source of much of Nigeria’s wealth, the region is remarkably underdeveloped. Fifty years of oil exploitation have led to numerous environmental accidents, hindering the traditional aquaculture of the indigenous people. For example, some environmental NGOs estimate that the region suffers from oil spills equivalent in magnitude to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill each year. While there is a multitude of ethnic groups, the most prominent are the Itsekiri and the Ijaw, who in certain areas compete for turf and power. Governance in the region has been particularly corrupt, fueled by oil revenue to state and local governments with little or no accountability. The line between politics and thuggery is thin.

The result of this witches’ brew has been a low-level insurrection that has waxed and waned for years. At times, insurgents have been able to shut down significant amounts of petroleum production, which has had a serious impact on international markets. At other times, federal and state governments have bought off militants—but never for long because the fundamental grievances that fuel the insurrection are never addressed.

As an Ijaw from Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta, Jonathan was widely expected to address Delta grievances, building on President Yar’Adua’s 2008 amnesty for militants. But the disarmament, education and reintegration included in the amnesty have been incomplete. Instead, the most salient characteristic of the amnesty has been payoffs to militant leaders. While the insurrection in the Delta has been relatively quiet, it will likely escalate as new militant leaders rise to replace co-opted ones. Kidnappings and piracy are increasing; oil-production facilities have been attacked; and new militant leaders have expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s focus on insecurity in the North. In 2012, shadowy Delta groups are threatening the region’s small Islamic community, ostensibly in revenge for Boko Haram attacks on Christians in the North.

THE SUICIDE bombing of the UN headquarters in Abuja galvanized international attention on Boko Haram, the violent radical Muslim sect centered in the Northeast that claimed responsibility. Boko Haram is often translated from Hausa, a major West African language, to mean “Western education is evil.” Originally, the name referred to followers of Mohammed Yusuf, a charismatic Islamic preacher who was murdered by police during a 2009 uprising. (The group generally referred to itself as The Movement for Sunna and Jihad.) Now, the term “Boko Haram” is used mostly by the media and security services to label loosely organized groups in northern Nigeria waging war against the federal government. What appears to hold these groups together is support for sharia and, for some, a millenarian version of Islam. However, the label implies more coherence in this grassroots movement than probably exists.

Daily attacks on politicians, soldiers, police, bars and churches, particularly since Jonathan’s inauguration in May 2011, have led British prime minister David Cameron and AFRICOM commanding general Carter Hamm to suggest counterterrorism assistance. They are concerned that Boko Haram may establish links with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Shabab in Somalia. Suicide is cultural anathema in West Africa. Hence, to many, a suicide bombing indicated influences from outside the region. There is also concern about Boko Haram’s apparently new access to sophisticated weapons and bomb-making technology.

Waves of radical, eschatological and millenarian Islamic revival occur intermittently in northern Nigeria, especially during periods of alienation and hardship such as now. Until recently, this anger normally has been directed against the indigenous, corrupt political and religious establishment that exploits the poor and is perceived as un-Islamic. Some militants seek to establish the kingdom of God on Earth and justice as defined by sharia law. In their efforts to achieve such an outcome, uprisings can be quite bloody. The Maitatsine uprising centered in Kano during the early 1980s, which claimed five thousand lives, superficially resembles aspects of Boko Haram.

This tradition animates Boko Haram, its founder Mohammed Yusuf and his followers. Yusuf, a young, charismatic Islamic preacher based at the Railroad Mosque in Maiduguri, initially led a somewhat pacifist community of thousands of university graduates, high-school dropouts and political figures, as well as the impoverished and uneducated. Like many, he and his followers welcomed the imposition of sharia law in 1999 in twelve Nigerian states. But they were disappointed and disillusioned by its lackadaisical enforcement by secular authorities. In 2009, Yusuf launched an insurrection against the secular state, ostensibly prompted by the killing of some of his followers in a dispute with police. Hundreds, if not thousands, were killed on both sides before the army suppressed the insurrection. The army captured Yusuf and turned him over to the police. The police then murdered him and his father-in-law while they were in custody. Yusuf’s surviving followers went underground and turned to field preaching.

Probably small in number, these groups appear to have won much wider public support. When they can, they murder government officials and members of those parts of the Islamic establishment that they see as allied with Abuja. They attack venues of un-Islamic behavior, especially bars and brothels, and rob banks to distribute the proceeds to the poor (doubtless keeping some for themselves).

Image: Pullquote: For the first time since the 1967–70 civil war, Nigerians in all parts of the country are questioning whether their country can hold together. It is very much in the U.S. interest that it does.Essay Types: Essay