Want a feel-good story about an African middle
class with a Hollywood ending? It is set in Nigeria, the continent’s biggest
country by population, brashest by reputation and ballsiest by self-conception.
Outside its borders, Nigeria is defined by Boko
Haram hashtag campaigns, imploding mega-churches and the occasional piece about
political dysfunction. But as an entity (“country” does not quite fit the
description), led by the unloved Goodluck Jonathan and his People’s Democratic
Party (PDP), it marches towards a general election in 2015, and into a future
without certainties or precedents.
Inside, the mise en scene is somewhat more
complicated. No state that is home to 170m souls can ever be properly united;
it will always be a nation of nations. That is certainly the case with Nigeria,
which is riven by the tenth parallel, the line of latitude that separates the
mostly Muslim north from the largely Christian south. So many of Nigeria’s
problems, to say nothing of its indefatigable energy, are generated by this
division. But as the energy increases, it becomes more unstable at the core.
Regional observers worry that Nigeria will eventually explode into a cluster of
Balkanised mini-states.
