Declassified

In 2015, Nigeria elected a retired general who promised to kill corruption and crush Boko Haram. Eight years later, he left behind about 63,000 dead, the naira in ruins, and a Supreme Court calling his last act "autocratic".This is episode 15 of Power & Plunder, a documentary series chronicling every head of state Nigeria has had since independence on October 1, 1960. My Sources:http...

This is episode 14 of Power & Plunder, a documentary series chronicling every head of state Nigeria has had since independence on October 1, 1960. My Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BTEtDc1FwIMZjiafI-lj61C4hNsScOBxLNfl64-FxqA/edit?usp=sharing

A quiet chemistry teacher is handpicked to lead Africa's most populous nation — but the election that put him there was stolen, his body was already failing, and the people closest to him would use his dying days to fight for control of a country of 150 million people. This is episode 13 of Power & Plunder, a documentary series chronicling every head of state Nigeria has had since independ...

In June 1998, a broke ex-general walks out of a Nigerian prison cell. Eleven months later, he's the president of Africa's most populous nation and almost none of it was his idea. This is episode 12 of Power & Plunder, a documentary series chronicling every head of state Nigeria has had since independence on October 1, 1960. My Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cuIY0z8rQzHn-Ja...

General Abdulsalami Abubakar presided over the most consequential 11 months in modern Nigerian history. A compressed, turbulent, and deeply contradictory transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule that began with one suspicious death, was punctuated by another, and ended with a flawed election that nonetheless inaugurated the Fourth Republic. This is episode 11 of Power and Plunder, a...

General Sani Abacha ruled Nigeria from November 17, 1993 until his death on June 8, 1998 — a period that produced the worst human rights abuses, the most brazen kleptocracy, and the deepest international isolation in the country's post-independence history. This is the story of how he did it all. This is Episode 10 of Power & Plunder — a 16-part series covering every head of state Nigeria...

When Nigeria's military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida annulled Africa's freest election in 1993 and installed a corporate boardroom chairman as a civilian placeholder, the 83-day presidency that followed was a meticulously engineered trap designed to hand power to the one general who had been positioning himself for it all along. This is the story of The 83-Day President Nigeria Tried To For...

How did one military officer hold power for eight years, preside over the disappearance of $12.4 billion, build Africa's most sophisticated system of political corruption, annul the freest election his country ever held, and retire to a mansion without ever being prosecuted? This is the story of Ibrahim Babangida, the Smiling Dictator Who Stole Nigeria’s DemocracyThis is Episode 8 of Power &am...

Between December 1983 and August 1985, Nigeria endured one of the most brutal military governments in Africa. It jailed 100s of politicians, executed drug offenders under retroactive law, attempted to kidnap a former minister from London using Israeli intelligence operatives, imprisoned Fela Kuti, and lost a power struggle that was rigged from day one. This is the story of Dictator Nigeria wants t...

Shehu Shagari, a gentle, scholarly Fulani teacher who never truly sought the presidency, presided over a republic that squandered an estimated $16 billion in oil wealth, expelled two million West African migrants, rigged its own re-election so blatantly that citizens cheered when soldiers arrived, and ended with a brigadier shot dead in a predawn firefight at the presidential villa. This is Episod...

He inherited a traumatized state reeling from the assassination of Murtala Mohammed, and handed over to an elected civilian president, becoming the first African military ruler to voluntarily surrender power. But before walking away, what he did with that absolute power was interesting. This is Episode 5 of Power & Plunder — a 16-part series covering every head of state Nigeria has had since i...

A 37-year-old Hausa-Fulani military officer from Kano, he came to power in a bloodless coup and was assassinated in a Lagos traffic ambush led by Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka exactly 33 days after delivering his famous "Africa Has Come of Age" speech at the OAU, in which he directly confronted the United States over Angola. Declassified US State Department documents reveal that Washington vi...

Yakubu Gowon inherited a nation soaked in the blood of two coups. He then presided over a civil war that killed up to two million people. His government oversaw an incredible oil boom that turned Nigeria from a groundnut exporter into a petro-state. Yet he watched as the system around him became the most corrupt government Nigeria had ever seen. This is the story of how trust built a presidency —...

On January 15, 1966, a group of young Nigerian officers launched a coordinated assassination plot that killed the Prime Minister, the Northern Premier, and nearly every senior political and military figure in the country. The one man they were supposed to kill but missed — Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi — ended up ruling the nation by the next morning. He didn't plan the coup. He didn&#39...

In 1914, Britain smashed two completely different territories into one colony — because it was cheaper. They rigged the constitution, found oil, changed the rules, and handed it all to a man who knew the whole thing was broken. His name was Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. The Golden Voice of Africa. He was Nigeria's Unlucky prime minister who was set up to fail. This is Episode 1 of Power & Plunde...

The Bush administration classified Somalia as part of the "Global War on Terror." They saw a failed state, an Islamist movement taking power, and they saw a potential al-Qaeda haven. What they did next was something straight out of thrilling spy movies. A secret operation aimed at preventing terrorism in East Africa. However, things went South pretty fast and that covert action instead c...

The IMF was created many years ago with the intention of providing loans to countries in financial need, but the conditions attached to these loans seem to be causing more harm than good for poor African countries. This is the story of one of the world's biggest financial scams, where one of the most respected financial institutions in the world keeps paying African countries to stay poor.

On one remote hillside in northern Tanzania lies the only source of tanzanite on Earth — a gem a thousand times rarer than diamonds. This documentary follows how that single mountain became the centre of a global criminal economy, where foreign corporations, corrupt officials, and international smugglers stole billions in blue stone while the people living on the mountain were left in poverty or b...

Beneath the dry, red soil stretching from Zamfara through Kaduna and into Niger State lies one of West Africa's most lucrative gold deposits. For generations, villagers dug these pits by hand, crude tools, modest yields, enough to sustain a family. But sometime around 2011, something shifted. What had been a humble artisanal livelihood began transforming into a criminally engineered enterprise...

This is the story of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. My Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MXH-etGZ13klSj2QaUTPboh5O04n58VKIGC3ujCrlf8/edit?usp=drivesdk

A Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire convicted of laundering a dictator's stolen billions has, three decades later, become the single largest private infrastructure contractor in the country — awarded Nigeria's second-highest honour by a president whose son shares a company with his. My Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SEztdh_xj3VfUdlLemRbzZ1A_RzoHD8Xe-Y42Hp6Xf8/edit?usp=sharing

How A wanted drug lord infliltrated the President's Family. This is the story of the most dangerous highway in West Africa. My Sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1St63cbTg886ivryvBuVyHKaXwdX5JpdcvYgj3k4DAUU/edit?usp=sharing

On February 6, 2026, diplomats from the United States and Iran sat down in Muscat, Oman, for the first round of nuclear negotiations since the Twelve-Day War of June 2025. Over the next three weeks, across three cities and three rounds of talks, something extraordinary happened: both sides moved toward a deal. By February 26, Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, to accept full IAEA...

This is the story about the DRC’s war with hundreds of armed groups battling for territory, resources, and influence. Decades of instability have become the country's status quo, creating an economy of violence that benefits nearly everyone except ordinary Congolese. Here’s why this endless conflict matters far beyond Africa’s borders.

The Future of energy depends on Africa's $34 Billion Lithium Rush. But there's a dark side to that story. This is the tale of how the world is scrambling to mine Africa's lithium right now.