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In office but out of power
 On an especially hot and humid Nigerian day earlier this month, the state-owned National Electric Power Authority (Nepa), notoriously unreliable at the best of times, had failed customers across the country, leaving the stand-by generators in factories and businesses and homes of a wealthy few working overtime ...more
MANUFCTURING:
Yearns for its golden age
"There can be no real growth in the Nigerian economy without a strong, virile, competitive manufacturing sector," says Rufus Giwa, president of the Manufacturers' Association of Nigeria (Man). In what he calls the "golden age of manufacturing in Nigeria", between 1973 and 1982, output expanded at 14 per cent annually and capacity utilisation averaged 65 per cent ...more
POLITICS:
Doubts as reform plan falters
"We believe Nigeria needs more than a change of heart," says Mofia Akobo, former petroleum minister and minority rights activist. "It needs something as radical as a brain transplant. Medically speaking, that is uncharted territory." In varying forms, Dr Akobo's prognosis can be heard across Nigeria today ...more
THE EAST:
Leaders sow seeds of separatism
A burned-out mosque in Aba, eastern Nigeria, bears an unsettling slogan in red graffiti: "Biafra". The act of desecration and surrounding destruction are frightening enough, a mark of how clashes following calls for the introduction of sharia, Islamic law, in the north spread with horrible consequences to an industrious trading town in the south- east ...more
COLUMN:
Stepping back from the frontier of anarchy
in Nigeria that we underestimated the damage done to its national psyche by the Sani Abacha and his precursors. President Olusegun Obasanjo admitted that his promise to solve the problem of electric power supply in the country had not recognised the depth of corruption in the power-generating industry ...more
COCOA:
Crop is below expectations
The trees are old, the farmers are worn, and the prices have reached record lows. In fact, despite a host of promises by the new civilian government, Nigeria's second largest foreign exchange earner - cocoa - is in as poor a state as any time during military rule ...more
POWER:
Crisis prompts direct control
Few Nigerians would leap to the defence of the state power chiefs sacked this month during a moment of presidential fury. There is little for which to thank the notorious National Electric Power Authority (Nepa) ...more
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