Thread by @cobbo3

In Lekki, one of the poshest suburbs of Lagos, the Nigerian army removed the cameras, turned off the street lights & LED billboard and killed "over 78" #EndSARS protestors singing the national anthem…then put the dead bodies in their trucks 1/7
thetelegram.com/opinion/local-…

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation (200M people), is really two countries. The southern, mostly Christian half, with all the oil, ports & most industry, is around 95% literate. Only 1 of the 19 northern, mostly Muslim states is over 50% literate 2/7
thetelegram.com/opinion/local-…

50% of young women in northern Nigeria have no formal education. Only 27% of southerners live below poverty line; 72% of northerners do. Yet it is young southerners on the brink of revolt, cos it is the political domination of the north that keeps ruling kleptocracy in power 3/7

Nigerian army officer corps has been dominated by Muslim northerners. Northern military dictators & elected presidents have ruled Nigeria for 38 of the 60 years since independence, but even Christian presidential candidates from the south are in hock to northern interests 4/7

The southern kleptocrats who buy the votes have an equally strong interest in the system, as it lets them go on stealing: one-third of Nigeria’s oil revenues over the past 50 years have ended up in foreign bank accounts 5/7

The young men and women in the streets of Lagos may not realise that their rebellion could endanger this entire system, but those who benefit from it certainly do — which is why their response has been so extreme 6/7

What happens next matters a lot, because 25 years from now Nigeria will have overtaken the US and become the 3rd biggest country in the world. It would be nice if by then it was a stable, well-educated democracy where prosperity extended beyond the south 7/7