The just released Nigeria 2021 Human Rights Report confirms what observers and rights advocates already know about the Nigerian state’s execrable human rights record and the increasingly dismal daily experience of Nigerians. Released annually since 1977 by the United States Department of State, the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are a critical gauge of the human rights situation across the world.

When conventional tools of resistance have failed or been compromised, humor has been a weapon of last resort for the African subaltern.  

Support for immigration in the West must be balanced with concern about governance in African countries. 

As the race for the Nigerian presidency takes shape, the fate of Nigeria itself hangs in the balance.

A rare positive note as Nigeria spirals into a state of lawlessness is the unintended return to the front burner of longstanding issues around governance at the subnational level. Until now, such issues have bubbled under the surface, receiving fleeting attention only when the country’s perennial crisis threatens to boil over, only to subside as soon as a temporary fix is found. Penultimate week, after still unidentified assailants opened fire on an Abuja-Kaduna train, killing eight passengers and kidnapping tens of others for ransom, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, emerging from a private meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, threatened to do whatever it takes to protect lives and property across the state, including “importing mercenaries from outside the country to do it.”