Nigeria ...what a shithole

[mrmcfister]

Oxfam estimate that at least 500 people ,many of them children, have been hacked to death over the weekend in ethnic violence in the shithole that is Nigeria .It's a muslim christian thing.All the money in the world would not get me anywhere near this car crash of a continent with it's disease,corruption,violence,etc etc.It appears that South Africa is the only place on the whole continent where you can trust the blood transfusions too ;albeit I bet many of the World Cup teams will be arranging their own supplies.Of course things are a little quieter down the road in Uganda but even there I see they're looking to introduce the death penalty for gay sex.

[Ogre]

welcome to www.agafd.co.zr, your leading resource for all things african.

[max_tranmere]

You are being a bit hard on Nigeria. I spent a few months working there in my 20's and I still know people who work there. All of the problems that Nigeria has are the fault of Britain f***ing everything up in the Colonial days. It was originally three seperate region's, governed seperately, but because it made it easier to administer from London it was decided that that region of west Africa should become one country. There have been massive problems ever since.

You will get a situation where one of the three regions of, what is now Nigeria, and has been for about 90 years, will be producing more of a certain thing than the other two parts, but because it is one country the wealth has to be shared evenly and this causes resentment. One bit will be more oil rich than the other areas, the bit with the most oil doesn't like the other two bits getting the same share as the bit that produces it gets and so on. The differnt religions are mainly split along the lines of the three regions aswell and there are flashpoint areas along what used to be the borders of these principalities where it all kicks off every so often.

Britain pulled out in 1960, leaving huge amounts of problems behind. In 1967 there was a civil war where one of the provinces tried to break away. This caused the deaths of 3 million people, and Britain secretly financed it. THREE MILLION DEAD - it was, and still is, horrific.

For years the capital was Lagos, but there were two Prime Ministers in the 1980s and 1990s who were Northerner's so, for political reasons, they moved the capital to Abuja. This was because they preferred it to be in the part of the country they were from and also so that if the country ever did break up and become the three provinces it used to be prior to 90 years ago, then the administrative power is in the bit they are from.

Nigeria is very oil rich and if run properly it would be very wealthy, but it has always been administered badly, has had some very corrupt leaders, but most of its problems come from Britain forcing three seperate regions to become one, when they did not get along, never wanted to be one, and have rows over whether the other two regions should get an equal share of what one of the regions produces.

Sadly, there will be problems in Nigeria for ever more. It may break up one day, it got near to it in 1967, and major tensions still exist. We, as British people, should be ashamed of ourselves quite frankly. We caused all these problems for them.

[RoddersUK]

So why doesn't it revert to the former 3 regions?
Or is that too simple?

[max_tranmere]

Because some want it and some don't. The people in the most oil rich part may want to break away and keep all the profits from that region for themselves, other people in one of the two bits annexed on may not want that because they will then be denied an equal shre of the profit from that region if it became a seperate country, therefore they are less keen. The Biafran War in 1967, sometimes called Nigeria's Civil War, is still very vivid in the minds of so many there. I was there about 25 years after and many people I knew talked about it like it was yesterday. Biafra tried to break away and the bloodshed was severe. Sadly diplomacy is something rarely viewed as a way forward when major issues arise and instead war was seen as the way to solve it. It didn't, and three million people died. Nigeria is a huge country with a population twice the size of Britain. It has never worked as one country, and sadly never will. There are more problems to come, and I say that with great sadness.

[David Johnson]

Hi
I can't say I have much knowledge of this subject, but what you state seems to make a lot of sense to me and fits in with my limited understanding. Too often Africa is called a basket case without an understanding of what has gone on before. Your post helps fill in the gaps.

Ta

D

[davey]

why the fuck should the British people be ashamed of anything that happens /has happened in that shithole?it was the British government that done it not the British people

[JB]

mrmcfister wrote:

> Oxfam estimate that at least 500 people ,many of them children,
> have been hacked to death over the weekend in ethnic violence
> in the shithole that is Nigeria .It's a muslim christian
> thing.

Not really... it's a clash between the "indigenes" and others - in other words it's a racial thing between people who originate locally and people who don't. Just goes to show, racist wankers appear everywhere.

> All the money in the world would not get me anywhere near
> this car crash of a continent

You should open your mind - I've spent about 2 months in West Africa in the past year and I love the place. If I had more time, I'd be there right now.

Nigeria's got major problems for a whole host of reasons - it's a complex history to understand, and I'm guessing you're not a complex kinda person.

I'd recommend Ghana which is almost next door, but very different: peaceful, democratic and with a fast-growing economy. They even have a free state-funded health service, which puts them a step ahead of our American cousins.

[max_tranmere]

David, Africa and other places have suffered a lot as a result of European countries imposing borders where they shouldn't have put them. There was a conference in Europe in the late-1800's where Africa was basically carved up, and if you look at a map of the top one-third of the continent of Africa most of the borders are straight lines - this was done by men with rulers and a pencil and it was 'you have that bit, we'll have the next bit' and so on. The borders in east Africa were decided by the location of two mountains - Britain got one and Germany got another - two countries were formed just because we could have one (Mount Kenya) and Germany the other (Mount Kilimangaro).

The imposition of the nation state, where differnt peoples were forced to live under one administration have caused problems all over the place. Nigeria, as I described, Zimbabwe, and numberous other places. Iraq is another example, and so is India/Pakistan. It was always said that when India was partitioned in 1948 the man who decided where the border would be left the country and never ever returned as he would likely have been lynched. From memory his name was Cyril Radcliffe, Mountbatten's deputy. The partition of India caused the biggest uprooting of people in history, made more people move than ever before anywhere, and caused the massacre of one million people in tribal conflicts.

We have a lot to be ashamed of. The British Empire may be gone, but its legacy is still causing major problems to this day.

[JB]

If you look at the behaviour of Mark Thatcher and his fellow criminals, trying to overthrow an African government (Equatorial Guinea) as some kind of "business venture", you can see the old British attitude is alive and well.

I agree with Davey though - we don't need to be ashamed as individuals who have done nothing wrong, but we need to be aware that our own history (and present) sometimes isn't as pretty as we like to think.