POLITICS-SIERRA LEONE: Calm Returns, after Anti-Nigerian Riots

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Jul 22 2002 (IPS) - Calm returned to Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, on Monday, one week after clashes erupted between rioting youths and Nigerian businessmen.

“The situation has been brought under control,” a senior police officer told IPS on Monday. More than 20 people were injured during last week’s demonstration, he added.

The officer said, “we have a dual problem, to pacify the irate youth and also to crackdown on the so-called 419 fraudsters”, as the Nigerians are known.

It all started on Jul 15 when a gang of the so-called ‘419 fraudsters’ lured a prominent Sierra Leonean currency dealer, Kortor Jan, to transact a 10,000-U.S.-dollar business. They ended up melting away with the money, and abducting him.

Nothing more was heard about the businessman until Jul 18 when his decomposed body was found in chair and dumped in a Freetown guesthouse. Hundreds of youth then went on the rampage attacking the business outlets of the Nigerians and beating up Nigerian nationals.

Mohammed Sesay, a 26-year old foreign currency Dealer, said: “we will kill any Nigerian that we capture as a way of revenging the death of Kortor Jan.”

But their threat of killing the Nigerians was aborted, although “many Nigerians”, assaulted by irate youths, were arrested and taken to police stations. When the situation became too dangerous, the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) sent in a Nigerian contingent to quell the tension. And that was when hell broke out.

“You cannot draft in Nigerian soldiers to deal with such a volatile situation because they will be tempted to protect the interests of their nationals over and above those of the locals,” remarked social commentator, Musa Sillah.

When the Nigerian peacekeepers rolled their armoured personnel carriers into downtown Freetown with dozens of armed troops, they met stiff resistance from the protesting youths, who were pelting stones at Nigerian shops and patrolling Nigerian troops.

At the end of the day, at least three bodies laid dead, the injured numbering more than 20. The security forces are still patrolling the central business district of Freetown where the bulk of Nigerians do their business, ranging from auto spare parts dealership to cosmetics shops.

“However, beyond this is a well co-ordinated network of criminals and gangsters who have perfected themselves in defrauding people and smuggling in hard substance drugs like crack cocaine and heroine, among others,” claims a police officer.

“We have to take a tough stance because this country is now been used as a transit point for drug smugglers and in many cases so much of the drugs stay here,” the officer from the anti-drugs syndicate confides in IPS.

Ironically, it was Nigerian peacekeepers that helped bring Sierra Leone’s 1991-2001 bloody civil war to an end.

Nigeria single-handedly bankrolled the operations of the West African regional body, ECOMOG, and provided the bulk of troops for the peacekeeping mission, before the UN took over in 2000.

Hundreds of Nigerian soldiers died in battle in Sierra Leone. And when ECOMOG mission was disbanded, many of the former soldiers returned to Sierra Leone under the guise of businessman.

Last week, the acting UNAMSIL commander, Major General Martin Luther Aguai, himself a Nigerian conducted an aerial reconnaissance in Freetown and got his troops deployed in the main area of the city. The night patrols by security forces helped prevent the planned attacks on Nigerians and significantly simmered tensions in the city.

The anger though is still strong among the irate Sierra Leone youth, who have vowed to revenge on Nigerians. There is also believed to be some element of rivalry among the two sides. Sierra Leonean protestors eye Nigerians enviously for making huge fortune while they — the locals — live in poverty and deprivation.

“The ten-year war has made people to be very militant. Nevertheless, people should not take the law into their hands,” Assistant Commissioner of Police, Christopher John, was quoted by the ‘Concord Times’ as warning the rioters.

A spokesperson for the UNAMSIL, which has 17,500 soldiers in Sierra Leone, told IPS that an investigation would be launched in to operations of their troops that led to three deaths and injuries of civilian protestors.

And even as calm has returned to Freetown, it may well be that the youths are buying time to take a revenge on Nigerians.

A Nigerian businessman, who is in hiding in Freetown, told IPS: “Our troops helped bring peace to Sierra Leone. And this is what we get in return.”