Welcome to The Inquiry, I'm Charmaine Cozier, each week one question, four experts, and an answer.

It's late April 2021. A politician delivers an emotional speech during the Senate debate.

He continues with,

towards the end of his address, he breaks down in tears, as he says.

The Weeping Man is Senator Smart Adyemi, and he's not a member of the opposition.

He's from APC, the ruling party, in Nigeria.

The West African countries' growing list of challenges include long-standing violence,

shrinking confidence in authority, and a young population who want their voices heard.

So this week we're asking, is Nigeria becoming impossible to govern?

Part One, moving targets.

And Nigeria is in reality two countries in one.

Buluma Bukati is a senior analyst on sub-Saharan Africa at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

He's also a columnist for a Nigerian paper called The Daily Trust.

Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, more than 200 million people live there.

Some of those broad differences revolve around resources.

Oil is Nigeria's biggest source of revenue.

Production is concentrated in the south.

In the north, the focus is more on agriculture.

Buluma says there are also social differences.

And the north is predominantly Muslim, and at the moment is very low in terms of literacy and

economy. Most of Nigeria's poor people come from the northern part, and most of the

about 10 million children out of school, about 70 percent of them come from the north.

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