OPINION
The Rumble in the Jungle that Keeps Rumbling
By Phillip van Niekerk
On 4 December, 2025, Rwanda’s lean, spare president Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Félix Tshisekedi — known at home as “Fatshi” — sat in the Oval Office on either side of Donald Trump, who was presiding like a referee at a championship boxing match.
But this was no reprise of Muhammad Ali’s famous “Rumble in the Jungle,” where he knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round at a stadium in Kinshasa.
The two leaders could barely look at each other. Yet, they signed a peace deal meant to end one of Africa’s most intractable conflicts: the war in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The optics were powerful.
The reality was something else entirely.Before the ink was dry, Rwandan-backed M23 rebels clashed with a massed force of Congolese troops, Burundian units, mercenary boss Erik Prince’s “contractors” and local “Wazalendo” militias on the northern fringe of Lake Tanganyika. Hundreds of civilians — men, women, children — were slaughtered. Hundreds of thousands fled. The city of Uvira, on the border or Burundi, fell briefly to M23 before the rebels withdrew, only to retake it later.
Back in Washington, Trump was receiving a “peace prize” from FIFA, citing the Rwanda–DRC accord as one of eight achievements he believed warranted his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. (Much to his chagrin the real prize had just been awarded to the Venezuelan politician, Maria Corina Machado). Had anyone outside the region been paying attention, the juxtaposition might have seemed grotesque.
This week, Rwandan and Congolese delegations were summoned once again to Washington to revive the accord, after which they issued a joint statement with the Trump administration. Rwanda pledged a partial withdrawal from the DRC (to Goma), the DRC agreed to go after the FDLR militia that Rwanda views as a security threat linked to the 1994 genocide. Both sides pledged once again to protect civilians in the war zone.
Even as diplomacy falters, the war is evolving.
The Congolese army has begun deploying long-range drones — Chinese CH-4 systems and Turkish Anka platforms — operated with the help of Serbian technicians. M23 has responded by bombing Kisangani airport with kamikaze drones.
Meanwhile, Erik Prince’s mercenary army of mainly Colombians, contracted to secure strategic infrastructure and mining revenues, are believed to have been driven from Uvira by Rwanda and M23.
One veteran Rwanda watcher noted: “Erik Prince still thought this was 1960 where a white man shows up with a gun and everybody runs away. He learnt the hard way.”
The Resurrection of Félix Tshisekedi
A year ago, Tshisekedi looked finished. His army, the FARDC, had been routed in Goma and Bukavu — the twin gateways to eastern Congo — and had fled, looting and in numerous instances raping in their wake.
The regional cavalry that had rescued Laurent Kabila decades earlier never came. Angola was distracted. South African forces had been defeated around Goma and were effectively hostages of M23. Romanian mercenaries hired to defend Goma fled across the border and surrendered to Rwanda.
In Kinshasa, the political class rejected Tshisekedi’s call for a coalition government. Former president Joseph Kabila, operating from Namibia, was quietly preparing a return.
There was nothing standing between M23 and the mineral-rich provinces of Katanga — and beyond that, the road to Kinshasa itself. But the rebels chose not to advance, choosing instead to consolidate control. They set up administrations, opened schools, and began constructing something resembling a Rwandan vassal state across North and South Kivu.
Tshisekedi had been written off before. This time, he did something different: he called Donald Trump. The pitch to Washington was blunt: minerals for security.
The Democratic Republic of Congo sits atop one of the richest concentrations of strategic minerals on earth — cobalt, copper, coltan, lithium, tin, tungsten, diamonds, uranium and gold. Many of these are the building blocks of the modern world: electric vehicles, missile systems, satellites, smartphones, and the batteries of the next industrial revolution.
While the DRC’s southernmost provinces in Katanga hold the largest deposits, eastern Congo is rich in coltan and gold — much of which has for years been smuggled across the border to Rwanda and Uganda, entering global supply chains scrubbed clean of its Congolese origin. Despite Kigali’s denials, the pattern is well documented.
Tshisekedi’s dilemma was stark. His army could not stop M23. Regional diplomacy had failed. The UN peacekeeping mission — one of the largest and most expensive in history — had become militarily irrelevant. So, he reframed the war in the transactional language that the Trump administration understands — supply chains and strategic competition with China.
The result was the US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement, signed that December day in the Oval Office. Under the deal, the DRC created a Strategic Asset Reserve of priority mining projects, where American companies would receive the right of first refusal. These included Rubaya in North Kivu and the vast Manono lithium project.
This was the catch: Kinshasa was offering access to mines it did not yet control— giving Washington a direct incentive to help the DRC recover them.
The Coltan War
For Tshisekedi, the primary obstacle was Rwanda.
Paul Kagame commands one of Africa’s most effective militaries. His forces have operated in Mozambique and the Central African Republic and are widely trusted by Western security planners. He has a defence pact with Israel covering cyber security, artificial intelligence and technology transfers.
But inside the DRC, Rwanda is widely disliked. M23 has a base of support among Banyumulenge communities, who have been historically discriminated against, but Kigali is deeply unpopular amongst much of the rest of the population. Populist radio shows and social media have further raised the anti-Rwandan temperature. The non-Banyumelenge wing of the rebellion, Corneille Nangaa’s Congo River Alliance, is dismissed as a Rwandan proxy.
The struggle now centres on Rubaya, one of the world’s richest coltan deposits, which accounts for up to 30 per cent of global supply of the ore used to produce tantalum — critical for semiconductors, aerospace systems, and smartphones.
Since capturing it in 2024, M23 has turned Rubaya into a major revenue stream, generating close to $1 million a month. Much of the output is smuggled into Rwanda before entering global markets.
The fighting for Rubaya has evolved into a “coltan war,” where M23’s control of the high ground, such as “Sita” hill, is equivalent to controlling global mineral flows. But the rebels are under pressure from the aerial attacks.
In February, a precision drone strike near Rubaya killed M23 spokesman Willy Ngoma along with several senior commanders, a big blow to the rebel movement.
Western investors want to transform Rubaya from a dangerous site manually mined by thousands of artisanal miners into a regulated industrial operation capable of supplying traceable tantalum to international markets. Heavy rains in recent weeks have caused landslides that have led to hundreds of deaths.
One of the companies associated with these discussions is TechMet Ltd., a Dublin-based company whose CEO is the South African Brian Menell, and whose shareholders include the US government’s development finance agency, the Swiss commodity trader, Mercuria Energy, and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.
For Kinshasa, Rubaya is both a military objective and a geopolitical bargaining chip.
Sanctions on Rwanda
While the US is very unlikely to put boots on the ground in the DRC, it has other weapons at its disposal. In March, the US imposed sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force and several senior officers, accusing Kigali of backing M23 and exploiting Congo’s mineral wealth.
This had the immediate effect of forcing a basketball team owned by Rwanda’s Ministry of Defence to withdraw from the Basketball Africa League, which is run by the NBA — a blow for a country that takes pride in branding its image through sports teams.
However, Rwanda’s military procurement relies on suppliers such as China, Israel, and Turkey, so the sanctions will be unlikely to impact Rwanda’s war effort.
The sanctions have had one unintended effect. The European Union, which funds some of Rwanda’s deployment in northern Mozambique where they are holding the line against ISIS linked insurgents, is reconsidering its support because of the sanctions. Kigali has warned that if funding ends it may withdraw its forces, which also help guard the gigantic TotalEnergies Liquified Natural Gas project.
Rwanda might have another reason for wanting to get out — they haven’t been paid by the Mozambican government in ten months. But the danger is that Jihadists in Mozambique are already regaining momentum, fuelled by new recruitment and foreign fighters.
A War That Cannot Be Won
On the ground in Eastern Congo, little has fundamentally changed. M23 remains well-commanded and backed by Rwanda. But its supply lines are stretched thin. Whatever its military strength, it lacks the numbers to control and administer vast territories for long periods of time.
The Congolese army remains fragmented, corrupt, and weak. The war has become a hybrid conflict shaped as much by remote machines in the sky as by militias with AK-47s.
Nearly eight million people are displaced across eastern Congo. A decisive military victory for Kinshasa appears unlikely. At best, Tshisekedi can contain the rebels and negotiate from a slightly stronger position. As one analyst put it: Congo is “a colossus with feet of clay.”
Phillip van Niekerk is the managing partner of Calabar Consulting, a risk consulting company specialising in Africa. The views expressed are his own. He also publishes Africa Unscrambled on Substack.
By Uji Wilfred
Right from the foundations of the Independence struggle that led to self-rule, political party formations in Nigeria were crafted majorly for the capture of political power through periodic elections.
Political Parties never had ideological foundations that defined the boundaries of political recruitment and participation.
Political parties in their formation, leadership structure and ownership, belonged more to the ruling oligarchs than the people or the masses.In the First Republic, political parties had little ideological bent, framed along regional and ethnic sentiments, but little of rallying the entire nation along in a unified polity.
In the general elections of 1954 – 1956, each of the ruling political party, the Northern People’s Congress, the Action Group and the National Council of Nigerian Citizens emerged as regional parties in terms of the demographic voting pattern as well as the control of political seats.The First Republic suffered from a contradiction of centripetal and centrifugal forces within the framework of the tripartite system which eventually led to the collapse of that republic.
Political parties as well as the leadership recruitment reflected a regional and ethnic bias more than the need for the national integration of Nigeria.
Decamping across political lines, irrespective of ideological leanings, were the basic norms of the First Republic with political parties splitting out from the major political party. Formation of new political parties to fragment the dominant hold of ruling political parties were common political vices of the political class at that time. For example, Chief Akintola, despite the ideological soundness of the Action Group, splitted up the party with the formation of a new political party.
Chief Akintola’s desire was fired more by ambition than the issues of ideology and national interest.
In Northern Nigeria, the ruling Northern People’s Congress waged a war of suppression and dominance against other minority political parties with strong ideological bent that inspired minority ethnic nationalism.
The NPC through its slogan of One North, One Destiny, suppressed minority political parties such as the United Middle Belt Congress led by Joseph Tarkaa.
The point is that Nigeria from her foundations inherited a political culture where political parties have weak ideological roots as well as party and leadership recruitment.
Since 1999, Nigeria has witnessed the recycling of bourgeoisie Political Party Formation and leadership recruitment through a process of metamorphosis that defiles ideological lines and national interest.
Political participation and leadership recruitment has been centered on the urgent need to capture power at the center using political parties owned by a few powerful oligarchs.
The People’s Democratic Party in its formation and foundation was a fraternity of past and serving military generals and their civilian equivalent.
The PDP since its inception has been led by past military officers like David Mark and Atiku Abubakar, the civilian equivalent of the military.
The dream of the PDP led by these retired military generals under the leadership of former President Olusegun Obasanjo was the enthronement of Africa’s biggest political party that was to last for a century.
As good as the dream of the party was, the PDP, like the experience of the First and Second Republics lacked deep ideological roots that defined the boundaries of political recruitment and participation.
The triumph of the People’s Democratic Party forced the rival All People’s Party and the Action Congress of Nigeria into a state of collapse and submission leading up to the bourgeoisie metamorphosis that resulted to the formation of the All Progressive Congress on the eve of 2015 with the sole objective to unseat President Good luck Jonathan.
The APC was a metamorphosis and amalgamation of opposition parties including some dissenting faction of the PDP to reclaim the so called birth right of the far right North in Nigeria to produce the President of Nigeria.
Political recruitment and leadership struggle in Nigeria has never been defined by ideological needs to salvage or emancipate Nigeria as a nation. Political struggle has always been a recycling of that section of the bourgeoisie, through a process of metamorphosis, whose objective is to capture political power at the center.
The present protest and political struggle by the African Democratic Congress, the faction led by David Mark and Atiku Abubakar, is a recycling of bourgeoisie metamorphosis not too different from the experience of 2015.
At best, the David Mark and Atiku Abubakar led protest represents that desperate struggle entrenched in the thinking of the Far Right of Far Northern Nigeria, that political leadership resides in the ancestral birth right of the aristocratic ruling political class of the North.
David Mark and Atiku Abubakar perhaps are suffering from a dementia that has made them forget that they were the agents that destroyed the foundations of democracy in Nigeria through the sacking of former President Good luck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party.
These men formed the All Progressive Congress and wrestled power from a democratic government exploiting the dynamics of national security and developmental challenges.
In 2015, Nigerians believed their opinions and through the ballot removed Good luck Jonathan.
However, since then, has Nigeria fared better under the APC that was enthroned by oligarchs leading in the present protest under the auspices of the ADC.
Perhaps, David Mark and Atiku Abubakar may assume that Nigeria suffers from a collective dementia that has forgotten the past so soon.
There is an adage that says, he who comes to justice and equity must come with clean hands. The same forces that enthroned bad governance in Nigeria factored in the APC, through a metamorphosis, want to rebirth another Nigeria through the ADC.
In ideological terms, this does not make sense, the ADC Protest is the same old thing of old wine in a new wine bottle.
If Nigeria must experience a change, let it come through some revolutionary medium that will not exploit the people’s trust and betray them once in power.
Over the past decades, the betrayal of public trust, exploiting the innocence of the people, perhaps the naivety of the people, is what we have seen and experienced through the circles of bourgeoisie metamorphosis and political leadership recruitment.
By Raphael Atuu
Benue State, fondly referred to as the “Food Basket of the Nation,” was created on February 3, 1976, by the military administration, carved out of the old Plateau State. From its inception, the state was administered by a succession of military administrators, followed by civilian governors in Nigeria’s evolving political landscape.
Over the decades, leadership passed through several hands each leaving varying degrees of impact on the state’s trajectory.
In its early years, Benue was widely regarded as a peaceful and united society. Communities coexisted in harmony, bound by shared values, cultural pride, and a strong sense of collective identity.
The economy was largely driven by agriculture, with fertile lands producing yams, rice, cassava, and other staple crops. Institutions like the Benue Cement Company also contributed to economic activity and employment.In those days, the government was distant from the daily struggle of the average citizen. Few people concerned themselves with the affairs of Government House. Wealth and dignity were derived from hard work, farming, trading, and craftsmanship not political patronage.
The people spoke with one voice, celebrated their traditions with pride, and upheld communal respect as a guiding principle.
However, the return of democracy in 1999 marked a significant turning point, one that would reshape the state’s social and political fabric in ways few anticipated.
With democratic governance came new opportunities, but also new challenges. Politics gradually became the most attractive path to wealth and influence.
For many, Government House transformed from a symbol of public service into a gateway to personal enrichment.
The perception of politics shifted from service to self-interest.
As political competition intensified, unity began to erode. Divisions along ethnic, local government, and party lines deepened. The once cohesive voice of the Benue people became fragmented, often drowned in partisan conflicts and power struggles.
Perhaps more troubling was the subtle transformation in societal values.
The Benue man, once admired for courage, resilience, and industry, began though not universally to exhibit tendencies toward dependency and political loyalty over merit.
Sycophancy started to replace integrity, and the dignity of labor was gradually overshadowed by the allure of quick gains through political connections.
Elected officials rose to positions of authority and influence, becoming key decision-makers in society.
Yet, for many citizens, the dividends of democracy remained elusive. Infrastructure development lagged, agricultural potential remained underutilized, and poverty persisted despite abundant natural resources.
The irony is striking: a state so richly endowed, yet struggling to translate its potential into tangible progress.
Beyond economics, insecurity and communal clashes in recent years have further strained the social fabric.
The peace that once defined Benue has been challenged, forcing many communities to confront displacement and uncertainty.
While these issues are complex and multifaceted, the role of political leadership in addressing or failing to address them cannot be ignored.
So, where did the politicians get it wrong?
They lost sight of the essence of leadership service to the people. Governance became more about control than development, more about personal gain than collective good.
Long term planning gave way to short term political calculations. Investments in agriculture, which should have remained the backbone of the state’s economy, were neglected in favor of less sustainable ventures.
Moreover, the failure to foster unity and inclusive governance widened the gap between leaders and the led. Politics became a tool for division rather than a platform for progress.
Yet, all hope is not lost.
Benue still possesses immense potential, fertile land, vibrant culture, and resilient people, what is needed is a return to the values that once defined the state: hard work, unity, integrity, and community driven development.
Leadership must be reimagined, not as an avenue for wealth, but as a responsibility to uplift the people.
The story of Benue State is not just one of decline it is also one of possibility.
With the right vision, commitment, and collective will, the state can reclaim its place as a model of peace, productivity, and progress.
The question remains: will its leaders and its people rise to the occasion?
If you want, I can.
By Tanimu Yakubu
Nigeria is not collapsing; it is confronting long-avoided economic realities. The current hardship, though undeniable, reflects a deliberate process of correcting structural imbalances that have persisted for years. Distress is evident, but it must not be mistaken for systemic failure.
Countries in true economic collapse do not unify exchange rates, rebuild external reserves, regain access to international capital markets, or improve fiscal performance.
Nigeria, despite significant pressures, is making measurable progress across these indicators.Ending a Distorted Economic Order
For years, Nigeria operated under an economic framework that projected stability while masking deep inefficiencies.
Artificially suppressed fuel prices, multiple exchange rate windows, and expansionary fiscal practices incentivized arbitrage over productivity.These distortions disproportionately benefited a narrow segment of the population while imposing hidden costs on the broader economy.
Their removal has revealed the true cost structure of the system. While this transition has triggered inflationary pressures, it has also restored policy transparency and enhanced the credibility of economic management.
Strengthening the Fiscal Base
Recent fiscal data indicates a strengthening foundation. Distributable revenues to the Federation Account have risen by over 40 percent following subsidy removal, reflecting improved remittance discipline and reduced leakages.
Nigeria’s public debt remains below 30 percent of GDP, a relatively moderate level compared to peer emerging markets, according to the International Monetary Fund. Meanwhile, external reserves have surpassed $40 billion, based on figures from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
At the subnational level, increased fiscal inflows are enabling more consistent salary payments, with some states introducing inflation adjustments, an indication of gradually expanding fiscal space.
Inflation: A Transitional Challenge
Inflation remains the most immediate and visible consequence of ongoing reforms. It is being driven by exchange rate adjustments, energy price corrections, and longstanding supply-side constraints.
Global experience suggests that such inflationary spikes are often temporary when reforms are sustained. The greater risk lies not in reform itself, but in policy inconsistency or reversal.
Interpreting the Present Moment
Public frustration is both expected and understandable. Nigerians are justified in demanding tangible improvements in living standards. However, it is important to distinguish between short-term hardship and systemic collapse.
Nigeria’s institutional framework remains intact, fiscal capacity is improving, and macroeconomic reforms are actively progressing. This phase represents adjustment, not disintegration.
From Stabilisation to Impact
The next phase of reform must translate macroeconomic gains into measurable improvements in citizens’ welfare.
Strategic investments in healthcare, education, and targeted social protection will be essential to sustaining public confidence.
Ultimately, the credibility of these reforms will be judged not by policy intent, but by their impact on everyday life.
Conclusion: The Imperative of Consistency
Nigeria has long recognised its economic challenges; what has often been lacking is sustained policy execution. The greatest threat at this juncture is not reform fatigue, but reform reversal.
Abandoning the current course would erode credibility, deter investment, and reintroduce the very distortions that hindered growth.
This moment demands patience, discipline, and resolve. Nigeria is not collapsing, it is undertaking a necessary correction and laying the foundation for a more resilient economic future.
Tanimu Yakubu is DG, Budget Office of the Federation.
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