My Beauty Best Teacher

Since ending a 27-year civil war in 2002, Angola has become one of sub-Saharan Africa’s richest countries. Angolan mines are the fifth-largest source of diamonds worldwide. Its oil wells already produce 1.9m barrels a day; on present trends, it could overtake Nigeria to become Africa’s largest producer. It has huge agricultural potential. Roads and railways that were destroyed during the fighting have been rebuilt. New schools and hospitals have sprung up.
But Angola is also one of the world’s most unequal countries. (Its Gini coefficient—a measure of income distribution in which zero indicates perfect equality—is 0.55). Most of the benefits of the resource boom have gone to a fairly small elite that lives in an African version of St Tropez, with ritzy beach clubs inside walled enclaves. A crop of skyscrapers encircles a harbour decorated with sleek motorboats and a Ferretti yacht costing $5.5m.

...I believe the majority of the country is behind not just the strikes but the Occupy Nigeria movement which seeks to seriously challenge the status quo and once and for all end the rule by kleptocracy. However there are other small but extremely powerful interest groups working for and against the government: Boko Haram and whoever is behind them; Jonathan and possibly some of the ex-Niger Delta militants; Senators and Governors who fear loss of their power and wealth; the trade union movement particularly the oil workers - how trustworthy are they? – the independent oil marketers or cabal. And of course there is the religious factor, the cozy relationship between an all-powerful state and a powerful highly influential set of religious institutions. Nigeria is about oil and nothing but oil...