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A woman stands in front of electoral campaign posters of Presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and members of the People's Democratic Party, ahead of Nigeria's Presidential elections, in Yola, Nigeria, February 21, 2023.
Podcast: Nigeria’s presidential election is a critical moment for Africa
Listen: On February 25, Africa’s most populous nation heads to the polls to vote for a new president in what is shaping up to be a hotly contested race. Nigeria has one of the fastest growing populations globally, one that could surpass the United States by 2050. And it’s a young country—75% of registered voters are under 50 years old. The candidates, Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Peter Obi from the Labour Party are all vying to replace the outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari.
To help you better understand the Nigerian election and what’s at stake, GZERO is handing over this podcast feed today to Amaka Anku, Head of Eurasia Group’s Africa practice. She brings us a conversation from the The Center for Global Development podcast moderated by CGD’s Senior Policy Fellow Gyude Moore.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Google Bard seen on Google blog post with Google logo on mobile, in Brussels, Belgium.
What We're Watching: Bard bot, Nigerian election heats up, Tibetan kids pulled away
Google's Bard vs. ChatGPT
Google has soft-launched Bard, the tech giant's answer to OpenAI's uber-popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot. Why should you care? Well, Google says that Bard will "outsmart" ChatGPT, a service that has taken the world by storm since it became a thing in late 2022 and is now backed by Microsoft. But how? Bard will be up to date on current events — giving it a leg up over ChatGPT, which is stuck in 2021. Also, Bard will run on something called Language Model for Dialogue Applications or LaMDA, which is so advanced that last year Google fired an engineer who declared that LaMDA was "sentient" because it could mimic human emotions. This is where it gets tricky, since theoretically this type of AI could be used to make deepfake videos virtually indistinguishable from real ones. And that, in turn, might someday unleash political mayhem befitting a "Black Mirror" episode. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. So far, access to Bard is by invite only, and Google likely has guardrails in place to ensure its new AI platform doesn't become too smart for its own good.
Nigeria nears decision day
Some people simply refuse to take no for an answer. Atiku Abubakar, known widely by his first name, is now making his sixth run for president of Nigeria in an election set for February 25. Atiku did serve as vice president under Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2007, but the now 76-year-old candidate is making a determined run to finally win the top job. He should be careful what he wishes for. Nigeria’s next president will wrestle with a COVID-damaged economy that’s still recovering from two recessions in five years and the ongoing security challenges posed by terrorist group Boko Haram in the country’s north, secessionists in the southeast, and well-armed criminal gangs in multiple regions. His campaign presents him as a “unifier,” not an easy sell in a country polarized along regional and religious lines. Still, he might actually win this time. His main opponents are the favorite, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who represents the currently unpopular ruling party of outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, and a compelling outsider, Peter Obi, who doesn’t have a well-organized party behind him with local officials to help get out the vote.
China is separating Tibetan children from families
Over 1 million ethnic Tibetan children are being forcibly separated from their families and placed in residential schools in China’s bid to assimilate them into the majority Han culture, according to UN experts. The youngsters only visit home for one or two weeks a year, and because they have not practised their native tongue, many struggle to communicate with their parents. This is the latest example of the Tibetan way of life coming increasingly under threat as part of the systematic “ideological education” policies targeting Chinese minorities under Xi Jinping. Chinese officials insist they are determined to promote ethnic culture, but Tibetan monks and nuns are also dispatched to “transformation through education” facilities, where they endure reported sexual abuse and torture — much like Uighurs suffer in reeducation camps in the northwestern Xinjiang region. The “Land of Snows” has long endured repression since China, but resistance there to the ruling Communist Party — which last erupted into a failed uprising in 2008 — is likely to be further blunted by increased state surveillance, including phone hacking, spying on villages, and even DNA collection.Texas on ice: Winter storms and uncharacteristically freezing weather have plunged the normally toasty US state of Texas into a severe crisis, as power grids knocked offline by the cold had left nearly 3 million people without electricity by Wednesday morning.
What We're Watching: Frozen Texas, another Nigerian kidnapping, Super Mario's next level
Texas on ice: Winter storms and uncharacteristically freezing weather have plunged the normally toasty US state of Texas into a severe crisis, as power grids knocked offline by the cold had left nearly 3 million people without electricity by Wednesday morning. The state's 29 million residents are now subject to rolling blackouts. Like everything else in America, the situation in Texas has already become a partisan football. Republicans skeptical of renewable energy seized on a handful of frozen wind turbines to argue that the failure of clean energy sources was responsible for the crisis, but data show the collapse in energy supply is overwhelmingly the result of natural gas infrastructure being knocked offline by the cold (pipelines in Texas generally aren't insulated.) In addition, because of resistance to federal regulation, Texas' grid runs with lower reserve power margins and no connection to surrounding state grids, meaning that no power can be imported when a crisis strikes. The sustainability of that model is likely to be the subject of fierce political wrangling in coming months, and will likely spill over into debates on Capitol Hill about "Green Stimulus." For now, millions of Texans are shivering, and not happy about it.
Another school kidnapping in Nigeria: Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has sent his security chiefs to coordinate the rescue of 42 people — including 27 children — abducted by gunmen from a school in the central state of Niger. Such kidnappings are a recurring tragedy in Nigeria: in 2014, Boko Haram militants abducted 276 schoolgirls, prompting the #BringBackOurGirls viral campaign, and just two months later they kidnapped close to 400 schoolchildren in northeastern Katsina state. This time, however, the kidnappers are reported to be not Islamist militants but an armed gang holding the hostages for ransom money. It's the first major test for the country's new military command, which Buhari reshuffled less than a month ago to better respond to Nigeria's multiple security crises, including a recent spike in... kidnappings. Will Buhari's top brass be up to the task of freeing the hostages without coughing up some cash?
"Super Mario" vs Italian red tape:Newly minted Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced on Wednesday a raft of ambitious reform proposals to help his country recover from its pandemic-induced economic crisis and attract fresh investment. His wish-list includes overhauling the income tax system, spending big on education and research, digitizing Italy's antiquated public administration systems, and speeding up the country's sluggish courts. But can he succeed where previous Italian PMs have failed? Draghi has two things going for him. First, unlike his predecessors who had to mop up the Italian debt crisis a decade ago, he won't be constrained by unpopular austerity restrictions when he starts spending Italy's share of the EU coronavirus relief fund. And second, Draghi poses no direct threat to any political party because he doesn't intend to stay on after his government's term expires in two years. Draghi is still hailed for saving the Eurozone a decade ago, but tackling Italy's entrenched and famously bloated bureaucracy may prove to be an even badder Bowser for the man known as "Super Mario."Nigeria's struggles
The reports are horrifying. Bullets flying overhead as school-age kids scream out in fear. Chaos. Shrapnel. Hundreds go missing.
This was the scene last week when militants stormed a high-school in Katsina, northern Nigeria, to abduct hundreds of students, 400 of whom remain missing. It's a horror story reminiscent of the 2014 kidnapping of schoolgirls that prompted the viral #BringBackOurGirls campaign championed by former US first lady Michelle Obama.
The attack, which has now been claimed by the militant group Boko Haram, comes just weeks after the brutal slaying of Nigerian farmers in Borno state by militants on motorcycles. (At least thirty of the victims were beheaded.)
Nigerians have grown increasingly furious at the government for not doing more to keep them safe. But what are the conditions that have allowed groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State cells to gain a foothold in Africa's most populous country and largest economy?
A new era. When Nigeria held presidential elections in 2015, it was the first time the country of over 200 million people had experienced a peaceful transition of power. Muhammadu Buhari — a former general who led a military junta that ruled Nigeria in the early 1980s — was elected as a civilian, vowing to root out government corruption and extrajudicial killings, and prioritize Nigeria's democratic awakening.
Buhari also pledged to combat Boko Haram, which was founded in 2002 aiming to establish Nigeria as an Islamic state, and had successfully seized swaths of territory under former president Goodluck Jonathan.
But Buhari's promises proved to be mostly empty. For instance, the government's brutal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (long accused of torture and extrajudicial killings) that Buhari had pledged to overhaul, continued to terrorize Nigerians, giving rise to mass protests this past fall.
Meanwhile, poverty has surged while corruption and grifting from those at the top have continued unabated. Unemployment among young Nigerians now hovers around 30 percent, a telling sign in a country where more than half of the population — over 100 million people — is under the age of 30.
Economic woes. After promising to deliver annual economic growth of 10 percent, Buhari has also squandered Nigeria's economic opportunities over the past five years. In failing to diversify the country's economy, his government has left Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer, vulnerable to the shocks of global oil markets.
Indeed, armed groups' attacks on oil facilities have further undermined the petroleum-rich nation's oil output. And disruptions to oil and gas supply chains have only gotten worse in the COVID era.
Nigeria's internal strife is further complicated by deep-rooted divisions along ethnic and religious lines. Around half the country's population identifies as Christian, while the other 50 percent, mostly in the country's northern provinces, identify as Muslims. While groups like Boko Haram subscribe to a warped interpretation of Islam that justifies murder of Christians, in practice, both Christians and Muslims have been targeted in recent years.
To be sure, religious and ethnic divisions don't explain everything about Nigeria's internal struggles. Clashes between herders and farming communities, which have erupted across Nigeria's Middle Belt in recent years, are mostly between Muslim ethnic groups, leading to hundreds of deaths and the displacement of thousands. Still, a 2019 survey found that while 73 percent of Nigerian Muslims approve of President Buhari, who is Muslim, only 26 percent of the country's Christians feel the same way.
Spillover effects: While Boko Haram's activities have mostly been concentrated in northeastern Nigeria, the group has at times expanded its reach throughout the central states, targeting hubs like Abuja, the capital.
Meanwhile, because of porous state borders within sub-Saharan Africa, insurgent violence in Nigeria has spilled over into neighboring countries too, stoking up local tensions in places like Chad, Cameroon, and Niger that lack the institutional strength to counter violent insurgencies.
No end in sight. While the Nigerian military — with assistance from neighboring countries — had some success in 2015 in pushing out Boko Haram from areas in the country's northeast, the problem persists: the militant group still retains control over some territory that it uses as a launching pad for waging deadly attacks that Buhari's government appears unable to control.
Nigeria’s Risky Business
Nigeria's president and his challenger in hotly-contested elections are blaming each other for a Eurasia Group report that listed their country as among the world's top risks for 2019.
The report detailed Nigeria's "intractable problems," and said presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, would "focus on enriching himself and his cronies" should he triumph. The report also called President Muhammadu Buhari "politically weak," "elderly" and "infirm." Both camps reportedly claimed the report was paid for by the opposing party. But a spokesman for President Muhammadu Buhari went further, asking the New York-based organization to produce a medical report of the president to verify its findings. "If that group does not publish an authenticated medical report along with their report, they should hide their head in shame," Buhari Campaign spokesman Festus Keyamo reportedly said. Nigerians head to the polls on February 16 in their country's most fiercely sought after elections since the transition to democracy in 1999.