October 11, 2007: The military has restored peace to much of the Niger River area, at least as far as oil facilities are concerned. As a result, oil companies are returning to abandoned oil operations and putting the equipment back in working order. This is expected to increase oil production by 23 percent over the next twelve months. That's about half a million more barrels a day. At $80 a barrel, that's a lot more money for government officials to steal.

The oil money has become a curse for Nigeria, as has been the case in most poor countries similarly "blessed." Politicians that get into office, particularly at the state level (there are 36 states, containing 140 million people), tend to begin stealing on a large scale. State boundaries tend to incorporate a minimal number of tribes, and the citizens are easy to manipulate if you buy off some people, and terrorize the rest. Moreover, state governors are immune from prosecution while in office. So the governors hire local thugs to do their dirty work, and order the corrupt cops to leave the governors thugs alone. The federal government, which is nearly as corrupt, as begun to go after corrupt governors, especially the more notorious ones, after they have left office. Western countries have cooperated by not allowing former governors from fleeing Nigeria, to a comfortable (thanks to all the stolen public money) exile. Increasingly, Nigerians are becoming violent over the bad government. But the corrupt officials, knowing that vast wealth is theirs if they can only deal with the unruly populace, have been coming up with new tricks to do just that. It's an incentive system from hell.

October 6, 2007: A British kidnap victim was freed by police, after a member of the gang was arrested and provided information on where the gang hideouts were. In the meantime, kidnappers are turning more to relatives of corrupt politicians, as these are easier targets, and likely to result in a substantial ransom payment.

October 3, 2007: In the north, anti-Christian violence continues. The most recent outbreak came about when paranoid Moslem high school students accused Christian students of planning an attack on a mosque. This led to attacks on the Christian minority in the northern Kano state (which is mostly Moslem), the death of nine Christians, the wounding of 61 others. Some 500 Christians were forced to flee their homes, and nine churches were burned down. Islamic radical preachers in the north are constantly preaching against the Christian "war on Islam," even though nearly all the religious violence in the world is Moslems attacking non-Moslems.