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country unable to build enough refineries or keep the ones it has functioning at capacity to process its crude oil on its own. On top of that, petrol imports are subsidised by the government through a system that has been alleged to be outrageously mismanaged and corrupt. In other words, Nigeria essentially buys back refined oil after selling it in crude form – and at an inflated cost thanks to the middlemen gaming the system.
    All the while, Nigeria’s population has been rapidly expanding. It is currently the most populous country in Africa with some 170 million people, including an exploding and restless youth population. It also recently overtook South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy strictly in terms of GDP size, but its population is far larger, meaning the average Nigerian remains much poorer than the average South African. The title of Africa’s biggest economymeans little or nothing to most Nigerians, the majority of whom continue to live on less than $1 per day.
    It is those Nigerians who are obliged to scrape whatever living they can in whichever way they can find it, while their leaders and corrupt business moguls force their way between traffic in SUVs with police escorts and seal themselves off inside walled complexes. The daily struggle to survive has led to all sorts of outlandish schemes that have, much to the chagrin of hard-working Nigerians, badly damaged the country’s reputation. Emails from Nigerian ‘princes’ promising riches have become so common worldwide that they are now a punchline, but that is only one part of the problem. In Nigeria itself, many residents have taken to painting the words ‘Beware 419: this house is not for sale’ on the outside walls of houses in a bid to keep imposters claiming to be the owners from selling them when no one is there. The number 419 refers to a section of the criminal code, and all such forms of financial trickery have come to be known as 419 scams. Another infamous example involves the police. Newcomers learn quickly that being pulled over by a policeman can be a maddening experience. They have been known to jump into the passenger seat and refuse to exit until they are ‘dashed’, or bribed, even if the driver has done nothing wrong. The almighty dash is central to Nigerian life.
    Because the oil has brought riches, there has been little incentive to develop other sectors of the economy. It would be wrong to say that Nigeria’s mostly Christian south, where the oil is located, has done well for itself in these circumstances, but it is certainly true that it has fared better than the north. It is better educated, has more industry and jobs and less poverty. Oil-producing states are handed a significantly bigger chunk of government revenue. Despite that, the region has in no way been immune to violence. The deeply poor Niger Delta, badly polluted by years of oil spills, has seen militants and gangsters take up arms, carry out attacks on the petroleum industry and kidnap foreigners. Some of the worstof this violence occurred under the name the Movement for the Emancipation for the Niger Delta and continued until a 2009 amnesty deal drastically reduced the unrest.
    The neglect of other aspects of the economy particularly hit Nigeria’s north, which relies heavily on agriculture, despite northern leaders having run the country for much of its post-independence history. Its culture is vastly different from that of the south, with Islam having migrated along with trade across the Sahara and into the region’s savannah lands around the Middle Ages. Much of present-day northern Nigeria, long ruled by Hausa kings, eventually fell under a caliphate in the early nineteenth century following an armed jihad led by a Fulani Islamic cleric, Usman Dan Fodio. Even today, Dan Fodio remains revered, but it is difficult to locate his reformist legacy in the region, where corrupt elites siphon off revenue at will