In Nigeria, Militancy to Precede Presidential Election

Presidential elections in Nigeria will not take place until 2015, but already Nigerian officials and political parties are debating current President Goodluck Jonathan's candidacy for re-election. In fact, the leader of the Niger Delta's powerful Ijaw tribe, Chief Edwin Clark, announced his support for Jonathan, a fellow Ijaw from the Niger Delta, on May 25.

Seen as a violation of the power-sharing understanding devised in 1999, Jonathan's candidacy will generate widespread opposition and controversy in northern Nigeria, where ongoing militant Islamist attacks will persist in the lead-up to the election. Meanwhile, Clark's endorsement likely will reintroduce militant attacks — albeit a pro-Jonathan campaign — in the southern oil-rich Niger Delta, relying on a tactic that helped force the country to accept Jonathan's vice presidential bid in 2007. The next three years in Nigeria will be punctuated by militant attacks, but the attacks will be conducted for different, even paradoxical, reasons.