Failed state? Why Nigeria’s fragile democracy is facing an uncertain future

In the first in a series on Africa's most populous state, we look at the effects of widening violence, poverty, crime and corruption as elections approach

• Why justice for my father's senseless murder will only come when we fix Nigeria

A series of overlapping security, political and economic crises has left Nigeria facing its worst instability since the end of the Biafran war in 1970.

With experts warning that large parts of the country are in effect becoming ungovernable, fears that the conflicts in Africa's most populous state were bleeding over its borders were underlined last week by claims that armed Igbo secessionists in the country's south-east were now cooperating with militants fighting for an independent state in the anglophone region of neighbouring Cameroon.