Nigeria will hold its sixth national election since the current transition toward democracy began with the end of military rule in 1999. Despite some seventy presidential candidates, the competition for the presidency is really a two-horse race. It pits incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) against former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). 

Chances are you haven’t heard of Andrew Yang even though he’s been running for president for more than a year now. By any objective standard, he is the longest of long shots. He has never held politi…

As I summarized in a blog post last week, Thailand has in recent days seen some of its most dramatic political developments in decades. After days of rumors, one of the pro-Thaksin Shinawatra parties…

In the months before Brazil’s elections in October 2018, many experts both within and outside the country dismissed the possibility that Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain and previously obscure f…

Cameroon is spiraling downward, with fighting between rebels in the Anglophone regions (the Northwest and Southwest regions) and President Paul Biya’s security forces intensifying.

Charles Dunst is a journalist based in Phnom Penh. He was written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, the South China Morning Post, and the American Prospect, among other publi…

The organizational features commonly found in the online criminal underground look a lot like traditional business structures, with organizational heads, line managers, and front-line staff. 

On November 18, an army base in Metele in northeast Nigeria was reportedly overrun by Boko Haram, and it is estimated that over one hundred soldiers were killed and significant military materiel looted. Nigerian soldiers reportedly made a video allegedly showing and narrating the aftermath of the attack. Much about the incident remains uncertain or disputed. 

The Marine Corps turns 243 years-old today. On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted a resolution to create a Marine force composed of two battalions. Since then, the Marines have been …

Nigerian society and political behavior at all levels usually is shaped by patronage and clientage networks. Politically, there are few genuinely independent voters, in the sense that voters in, say, Vermont or Switzerland are completely free to vote for whomever they like. Clients usually vote as their patrons wish, and nearly everybody is both a patron and a client, from the top of society to rag pickers at the Lagos dump.