Nigeria youth go on rampage

It's the bankers at work again.

IMF head Christine Lagarde went to West Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Ghana etc) and ordered them to impose "austerity" on the masses by, among other things, eliminating fuel subsidies.

Result: fuel and transport prices tripled, causing riots in cities like Lagos. (Much like the IMF-induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Western-engineered financial crisis.)

Nigeria has an Islamist group called Boko Haram that ostensibly wants to separate northern Muslim Nigeria from southern Christian Nigeria. They are funded in part by the USA, who uses them to keep the Nigerian masses fighting each other, rather than joining against Nigerian elites and foreign bankers. And the West wants to keep that Nigerian oil flowing, while keeping China out. USAFRICOM has a big presence in Nigeria. 

Nigeria is a huge producer of oil, but must import fuel, because the government is utterly corrupt, and the refineries are in disrepair. Foreign bankers will not let the government build refineries. Bankers pay the Nigerian elites, and keep the Nigerian masses in severe poverty. (Nigeria is the most populous African nation.) 

Nigeria's government is full of Goldman Sachs alumni. 90% of the bank deposits in Nigeria are owned by 6 percent of the depositors. The gap between rich and poor is extreme. Lagos, the capital, has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in Africa.

There is catastrophic pollution in the oil producing areas. Most people have cell phones, but no safe drinking water.

I personally know two Pakistani nationals who lived in Nigeria in the 1970s. They tell me that when the oil industry first took off, Nigeria was a paradise, with the masses enjoying great prosperity. Then the bankers moved in, corrupted Nigeria's government, and plunged the masses into poverty. Since then, Nigeria has been a nightmare.

Addendum to my previous comment:

Nigeria’s de facto ruler is Ms. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former VP at the World Bank. 

Following Christine Lagarde’s orders, Ms. Iweala says she eliminated fuel subsidies for the masses in order to “improve the quality of life.” (We’re taking away all your food so you can have more food.)

Ms. Iweala, the MF, and World Bank have systematically reduced the masses to poverty via ‘Structural Adjustment” (a bankers’ euphemism for debt slavery) that involves a massive wealth transfer. Social programs are eliminated, as are trade tariffs that protect small businessmen. The poor must pay higher taxes and fees, while the rich pay less and less. Wages plummet. The average laborer in Nigeria was paid 35% more in the 1970s than today.

Meanwhile the oil extraction continues. Last month (Dec 2011) Royal Dutch Shell spilled two millions gallons of oil into the ocean off the coast of Nigeria. It was the worst spill in Nigeria in 13 years in a part of Nigeria where the oil and gas industry has been despoiling the environment for more than 50 years. This disaster easily dwarfed the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico – but you don’t hear about it in the corporate media.

Hundreds of square miles of sensitive coastal wetlands have been poisoned, perhaps forever. Fishing areas have been reduced to toxic waste zones. Village life has been grotesquely refashioned by flaring gas fumes and pipelines that often run through people's homes. Disease, birth-defects and chronic illnesses are all part of an unregulated industry that operates outside the range of global media, but with the full complicity of the Nigerian elites who want nothing to upset their petroleum cash-cow. And only the elites (and foreigners) enjoy the oil profits.