‘Today we shall drink blood’: internal unrest in Nigeria

Despite some tentative internal peace agreements, Nigeria continues to face violence from multiple groups. This violence feeds upon itself, with segments of the population being mobilized both for self defense and for pressing their ideological and practical goals. These multiple sources of violence, which the Nigerian government appears unable to control to any significant degree, have a long term corrosive effect on the country's internal stability. There are few reasons to be sanguine as to any rapid changes to the level of overall violence or the relative number of armed groups, although their specific identities may shift. Nigeria represents a good case study of a country in which relatively low but persistent violence by a multiplicity of groups can have major impacts on internal security.     

Terrorism,insurgency, kidnapping,and security in Africa's energy sector

Energy continues to serve as the bedrock of modern economies and the main driver of modern society. For Africa, the production and supply of energy resources such as crude oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biomass, biofuels and other renewables are an important source of employment, rents, taxes, royalties and profits. This sector brings in several tens of billions of dollars of revenue annually. The production and delivery of such resources, however, depend on critical infrastructures such as pipelines, refineries, processing plants, terminals, rigs, electrical energy pylons, substations, pump stations, vessels, and tankers. These infrastructures have been attacked by terrorists, insurgents, vandals and saboteurs, all of whom see them as targets against which to register their grievances and extract concessions from the state. This paper is a chronological account of some of the documented incidents of terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping, destruction, sabotage, and human casualties suffered in the oil and gas sectors in Africa between 1999 and 2012. It is based on data extracted from the databases of the RAND Database of World Terrorism Incidents and the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database (GTD).