Photo source: Foreign policy By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront The security situation in Nigeria is deteriorating for quite a while. Newer conflicts have been simmering in its region, surpassing the older ones, most recent being the north-western region conflict, which has been regarded six times deadlier than the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast that started in 2009. There is a bandit- extremist nexus in northwest Nigeria, which include local kidnappings and manslaughter. The official stance of this conflict by the government is ‘banditry’. However in actuality, there has been an ever growing evidence that the region is becoming a haven for Islamic groups linked to ISIS. It includes the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Ansaru, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a splinter of Boko Haram, formed in 2016, popularly referred to as the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), and the Fulani herdsmen of West...

Photo Source: Guardian By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront The 2019 Nigerian Election was unique in many ways. It was the costliest election till date in Africa, with costs going up to 242 billion naira . Around ninety-one political parties contested polls and 84 million visited the polling booths. These figures itself reflect the hope that democratic values give to the common Nigerians, as the country reemerged from the military rule since 1999, after General Sani Abacha, died in 1998. Since then, Nigerians longed for a civilian leading them. Due to a young and educated workforce, oil reserves, they have high ambitions to transform the country, all along, despite greed, tribalism and corruption harming public's collective interests. The country still faces rising conflicts in land use, and in generating oil revenues in the Delta. Despite these growing problems, the 2019 Nigerian election, in a way, embodied the thought of change. It was also the country’s bigges...

Photo Source: Wall Street Journal By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front In the fertile Middle Belt of Nigeria, Benue State has long been celebrated as the nation’s food basket, yet it has also become the epicentre of one of Africa’s most troubling internal conflicts. Within the village of Aya Mbalom, Christian farmers and Muslim Fulani herdsmen once lived in relative harmony, their livelihoods tied to the land and its rhythms. That fragile coexistence has unravelled in recent years, replaced by violence, displacement, and destruction. The April 2018 attack on St Ignatius Catholic Church, where gunmen killed two priests and at least seventeen worshippers, marked a grim turning point. Reuters and Premium Times reported the incident as part of a wider wave of assaults across Benue, underscoring the vulnerability of rural communities. Joe Parkinson of the Wall Street Journal later described Nigeria’s farmer–herder clashes as cumulatively more lethal than Boko Haram’s insurgency, ...