Mamadou Tandja, aged 71 and President of Niger, has won a referendum allowing him to continue in power for another term.

Turnout was at 4%, according to the opposition, and Tandja won a staggering 92% of the vote.

So, Tandja has been re-elected on the support of 3.6% of the population.

Why is it so difficult for third world dictators to give up power?

I blogged a few days back about the insurgency in the Delta region, which has seemingly quietened down just a little bit for only a little while.

Now, we have trouble in northern Nigeria (again):

Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.

A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.

Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.

Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.

Nigeria as a nation is an artificial colonial construct with little or no common characteristics among the various ethnic and religious groups that were forced together.

The federal government is incompetent and corrupt. It cannot manage a single conflict, as in the Delta, without flaring up even more tensions.

It would be better just to allow the secession of the three main regions in Nigeria, with democratic transitions managed by the UN and other international bodies. That would provide for some peace, at least for a little longer.

Ghana is set to receive the 200 year old head of a ruler executed by Dutch colonists… sorry about the, uh, pun.

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has just declared a 2 month cease-fire in its decades long campaign of terror against oil companies, foreigners in the Niger Delta region and the Nigerian government.

This is in celebration of the release of Henry Okah, a rebel leader arrested by the government during its own campaign of terror against the Igbo people of the Niger Delta a year ago. The cease-fire is probably only a short term respite to allow the rebels to regroup and recover from the government’s campaign against it. Read on »

As I had written about before, Mugabe has given his military full reign over several diamond mines in Zimbabwe.

The military, as could only be expected, is engaging in a campaign of violence, murder and oppression to extract as much monetary value from the mines and, not surprisingly, the miners.

HRW reports:

Zimbabwe’s armed forces are engaging in the forced labor of children and adults, and are torturing and beating local villagers on the diamond fields of Marange district … The military, which remains under the control of [Mugabe's] ZANU-PF … killed more than 200 people in a violent takeover of the diamond fields in late 2008…

…income from the fields has been funneled to high-level party members of ZANU-PF…

CNN provides a specific example of this military criminality:

Lameck Chiso, 29, said he was stopped at a police checkpoint on his way from work in the diamond fields.

“Three men in army uniform jumped into my car and asked me to drive them back to the mining area,” Chiso said.

They took his money and urged him to praise the “wonderful job” the army was doing of restoring order to the Marange diamond area, Chiso added.

Mugabe is a bastard who will use any means necessary to remain in power and to fund his criminal regime. His power-sharing agreement with Tsangvirai is at best impotent and a charade.

African leaders need to take the unprecedented step of supporting regime-change in Zimbabwe, before a civil war breaks out.

Idiot?

Mugabe doesn’t like Little Johnnie.

Crazy Bugger

Differences abound between Angola before and during the civil war there and Zimbabwe today, but the one common factor is wealth and control of natural resources in military hands.

UNITA, the Angolan rebel force, controlled diamond mines for decades, using controversial civilian labor, to extract the highly profitable resource. These so-called Blood Diamonds allowed UNITA to wage war against the a dysfunctional government and other rebel groups, with implicit support from DeBeers and other diamond companies.

The result was 500,000 dead in a 27-year conflict. Read on »