Word: nigerias
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...prove how seriously he takes the issue, Jonathan's second action (after sacking the justice minister, who had campaigned most noisily against his promotion) was to call a meeting with the oil majors in Nigeria. The peace process was his top priority, he told executives from Chevron, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell. The rebels have already responded. On Feb. 12, MEND commander Mack Anthony told TIME he had declared a new 90-day ceasefire...
...while Jonathan's southern origin may please the rebels, it is likely to annoy the northern Muslim political elite, which has dominated Nigeria's politics for decades. In the strange way of Abuja, the capital, this presidency was meant to be for a northerner. But with Yar'Adua sick and a southern Christian back in power, Nigeria's sectarian divide - which frequently results in large scale Christian-Muslim pogroms - could worsen. "I have no confidence in his leadership," Dr. Baba Ahmed, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, told TIME. "Jonathan is a frontline member...
...influential men in Africa, is another factor. Nigerian leaders often come with a powerful mentor working behind the scenes; a backer whose office is the only way to get to the big guy. On Feb. 11, two days after his protégé took office, a mass of Nigeria's rich, powerful and wannabes - parliamentarians, former ministers, ex-governors, a former police chief and even the head of a state-owned television station - crowded into the expansive living room of Clark's Abuja mansion. Clark sensed his growing power. "I am [Jonathan's] political godfather," he told TIME, regarding...
...then there's corruption. Jonathan may have got the Bayelsa governorship through his boss' alleged misdeeds, but he is hardly free of the biggest impediment to progress in Nigeria: corruption. The election that saw Yar'Adua and Jonathan win office was described by the E.U. Election Observation Mission to Nigeria as "not credible" due to "lack of transparency and evidence of fraud," adding it had "no confidence in the results." Jonathan's 2007 declaration of $2.4 million in assets during the campaign also raised questions about how an academic and public servant could earn so much. Jonathan's wife Patience...
Baggage has a habit of slowing a leader down - just what Nigeria does not need. "He owes all Nigerians a duty to act fast," Lagos-based Guardian daily newspaper said in an editorial two days after his appointment. Or as the rebel commander Mack Anthony says: "Our man being at the helm does not mean our target has been achieved. If within 90 days Jonathan does not perform, we will go back to the creeks to re-launch the militancy...