The bombing of the U.N. building in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, claimed 23 lives and wounded 81 people on Aug. 26, 2011. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attack. Credit: Chris Ewokor/IPS

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Nigeria, Jun 7 2013 (IPS)

Residents in the three Nigerian states where a state of emergency has been declared are living in fear as food prices soar and government soldiers conduct door to door campaigns to root out terrorists.

The Joint Military Task Force has been deployed to the three northern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, where on May 14 President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency.

Jonathan imposed the state of emergency following security reports that terrorist groups, including the Islamist extremist organisation Boko Haram, had over-run some towns in the north-eastern part of the country, removing Nigerian flags and hoisting their own.

But Amnesty International’s (AI) deputy Africa programme director, Lucy Freeman, told IPS that in addition to living in fear of attack by Boko Haram, people in the affected states are facing human rights violations at the hands of the very state security forces whose mandate is to protect them.

“In recent weeks, residents of Borno state in northern Nigeria have told Amnesty International that mass arrests in Maiduguri (a town in Borno state) have increased. Many people have fled their homes. Some areas of the city are gradually becoming ‘ghost towns.’

“Public schools have closed as parents are too scared to send their children to school,” Freeman said.

Boko Haram, which means Western Education is a Sin, is fighting for an independent state and the imposition of Sharia Law in northern Nigeria. According to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch, the group has killed almost 3,000 people since 2009. The most recent attacks were on May 7, in the northern Nigerian town of Bama, which killed 55 people.

Freeman noted that findings by AI showed that many of those detained had been denied access to the outside world, including lawyers, families, and courts, and were held outside the protection of the law.

“Detainees suspected or accused of being members of Boko Haram are usually not informed of why they have been arrested, their families are not told where they are being held, and they are generally denied access to a lawyer.

“Of those detainees accused of being members of Boko Haram who have been charged with a criminal offence and brought to court since 2009, very few have had their cases heard. Most are remanded in prison where they remain awaiting trial,” she said.

Ali Sani fled his home in Mubi, one of the major towns in Adamawa State, and now lives in Kano, northern Nigeria.

He keeps up to date on what is happening in his hometown and told IPS that the dusk to dawn curfew imposed by the military there was seriously affecting commercial activities in the town.

“A friend who came from Mubi at the weekend told me that there is no fighting in Mubi, but the curfew imposed on the state is affecting business and free movement.

“You cannot communicate because phones have been cut. Farmers cannot farm because of fear, and food prices have gone up,” he said.

While declaring the state of emergency, Jonathan explained that it had become necessary because of a recent spate of terrorist activities and protracted security challenges.

In addition to the attacks in May, a suicide booming in March claimed the lives of 41 people, and in April, fighting between the army and Boko Haram claimed the lives of 187 people.

An editor from the north central state of Kaduna, who wanted to be known only as Rahman, told IPS that communication in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa had been cut off since the state of emergency was declared.

“I think it is a deliberate thing to cut communications between members of Boko Haram and also to stop them from using mobile phones to detonate bombs.

“But this has affected innocent subscribers who cannot reach their relations or be reached,” he told IPS.

But Fredrick Fasehun, founder of the Oodua Peoples’ Congress (OPC) in southwestern Nigeria, said that the military operations in the area were normal procedure under a state of emergency. The OPC is a militant Yoruba nationalist organisation in Nigeria.

“When you declare a state of emergency in a region, it is the duty of the armed forces to maintain law and order and it is known that soldiers maintain law and order through force,” Fasenun told IPS in Lagos. As the founder of the OPC, Fasehun has been detained on several occasions by the military for allegedly operating an illegal militant group.

He, however, called for the proper interrogation of those arrested and said those found not to be involved in the insurgency should be freed. He said those implicated in the fighting should be taken before a court of competent jurisdiction.

While also supporting the state of emergency in the three states, rights activist Femi Falana told journalists in Lagos that in the face of incessant terrorist attacks, kidnapping, armed robbery and other violent crimes in Nigeria, the government should stop paying lip service to the security of life and property in the country.

He commended Jonathan for acting within the ambit of the constitution by not dissolving the democratic structures in the affected states.

Waibite Amazi, a fisherman in Nigeria's troubled oil-rich delta region, spreads out his net outside his homestead, Nigeria. Farming and fishing is the main source of livelihood for the impoverished, rural population here. Courtesy: Dulue Mbachu/IRIN

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Nigeria, Jan 31 2013 (IPS)

The decision by The Hague over Shell’s liability for polluting in the Niger Delta shows that justice is possible – but it is extremely hard to achieve if you are taking on a massive multinational, says Amnesty International’s Africa programme director Audrey Gaughran.

While The Hague dismissed most of the landmark case brought by the four Nigerian farmers and environmental pressure group, Friends of the Earth, against a subsidiary of international oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, the judges ordered Shell Nigeria to compensate one farmer for breach of duty of care.

Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company, is the largest oil and gas company in Nigeria, Africa’s top energy producer, which produces more than one million barrels of oil per day.

The Nigerian farmers and Friends of the Earth filed the suit in 2008 in The Hague, where Shell has its joint global headquarters, seeking unspecified reparations for lost income from contaminated land and waterways in the petroleum-rich Niger Delta.

One of the farmers, Friday Alfred Akpan, from Ikot Ada Udo village, had complained that the oil leakage in his community had destroyed his 47 fishponds. He said the destruction of the ponds had resulted in his inability to fend for his family.

The pollution was a result of oil spills in 2004, 2005 and 2007, the complainants said.

The Niger Delta, which accounts for 50 percent of this West African nation’s oil exports, has about 31 million inhabitants. Farming and fishing is the main source of livelihood for the impoverished, rural population here.

According to AFP, the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth welcomed the one compensation order but was stunned to have lost the other cases.

“Clearly it’s good news that one of the plaintiffs in this case managed to clamber over all the obstacles to something approaching justice,” Gaughran told IPS from Lagos on Wednesday, Jan. 30.

“Given the really serious difficulties of bringing these cases at all, the significance of today’s ruling is that one plaintiff prevailed and will get damages.

“However, the fact that the other plaintiffs’ claims were dismissed underscores the very serious obstacles people from the Niger Delta face in accessing justice when their lives have been destroyed by oil pollution.

“It is clear that governments need to look at the formidable obstacles claimants face, especially when taking massive oil companies to court,” he said.

Wale Fapohunda, a commissioner with the National Human Rights Commission in Lagos, told IPS that the fact that the case was filed in The Hague showed a lack of faith in the Nigerian judicial system which is plagued by corruption.

“We need to focus and ensure that our own justice system is able to respond to human rights violations, particularly when they are committed by multinationals against citizens,” said Fapohunda, who is also a managing partner of the Legal Resources Consortium and the former secretary of the Presidential Commission on the Reform of the Administration of Justice in Nigeria.

“The trend now is that because victims in the region are often intimidated by the multinationals who believe they are close to our justice system, affected persons in the region will continue to find justice outside our shores, and that is bad for us,” said Fapohunda, who is also on the international advisory board of Penal Reform International.

Lawrence Quaker of Human Rights Law Services, Lagos, said the case as a good example of how Nigerians are beginning seek international justice amid the failure of the country’s judiciary.

“The filing of the case in The Hague shows that some people are losing confidence in the Nigerian judiciary and are going outside to seek redress. An example is the conviction of former Delta State Governor James Ibori in the United Kingdom.” In April, Ibori was convicted of fraud for allegedly stealing almost 77 million dollars intended for Nigeria’s poor. Prior to the case, Ibori had been tried in Nigeria on the same charges and had been found not guilty.

“It shows that the judiciary abroad is not biased and we can take cases against companies to their motherland for adjudication and get a fair hearing,” Quaker told IPS.

Shell hailed the judgment as a victory. Castelain was quoted by AFP as saying: “We are very pleased by the ruling of the court today. It’s clear that both the parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, as well as the local venture … has been proven right.”

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 20 2009 (IPS)

The high rate of divorce in Kano state, northern Nigeria has become a worrisome phenomenon. Six months ago, an organisation of widows and divorcees tried to stage a massive march through the city of Kano to draw attention to their situation.

Fijabi: 'Divorce is not favourable to women. Education can help women to assert their rights, but the law has to make provision for it first before they can seek for such rights.' Credit:

Mufuliat Fijabi, a senior programme officer with BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, an NGO based in Lagos, told IPS that “divorce is just a tool to relegate women to the background”. Baobab has outreach teams working throughout northern Nigeria to educate women about their rights and how to defend them.

Excerpts of Fijabi’s interview follow.

IPS: Kano State is said to have the highest divorce rate in Nigeria: do you have an exact figure? Mufuliat Fijabi: It is high but we do not have any figures presently.

IPS: What is the status of women who get divorced in Kano? Who takes care of their welfare and those of their children? MF: You know the status of a woman who has to go back to her parent’s one-room apartment. Even while living with their husbands, the standard of living is poor for some of them, so when they move into their parent’s house, the situation becomes critical.

IPS: What are the typical reasons for divorce in Kano State? MF: When you talk about divorce, under Muslim law, Kano is known to be one of the states where this is on the increase. It is widespread in the state.

The reasons for divorce are usually not among the reasons permitted… Under Muslim law, we have specified grounds for divorce.

But most of the time what you find is that (divorce) is being used as something to relegate women to the background and at times as a form of punishment against a woman, which is an issue that concerns Baobab as a woman’s right group.

Baobab has an outreach team in Kano and we have been working closely on the issue of divorce with the team and with other women in the state. We know very well that divorce is used sometimes as a punishment for women.

(Sanctioned) reasons for divorce for example could be as a result of the absence of a husband for a long period of time which is translated as abandonment. It could also be as a result of barrenness, it could also be because of lack of maintenance.

It could also be on the grounds that the two parties concerned are no longer interested in the relationship and both agreed to divorce to go their separate ways.

Divorce according to Muslim laws may take place on the grounds that the husband batters the wife which is something that could lead to death if not curtailed on time.

But divorce in Kano, is usually not because of any of these reasons. More commonly heard is, I want to marry another wife and I already have four, so let me drop one and bring in another one.

Flimsy reasons: some husbands say women do not cook well. Some say they want boys and the woman is not giving them boys. But women do not manufacture children; they are gifts from God.

Sometimes it’s that the woman wants to seek for more education and the husband feels that if she goes to school now, she may become something else, and so he divorces her.

Divorce is something that is used as a tool to relegate women to the background, to make women feel less human.

IPS: Can a woman also seek a divorce under Islamic law? MF: Under Muslim law, a woman can also seek for divorce. The woman can ask for ‘redemption’ from her marriage, get her freedom if she feels that the marriage is no longer working for various reasons. It could be on the ground of battery, domestic violence. It could also be on the ground of the sexual state of the husband.

But what we find in Nigeria is that any time a woman attempts to seek for divorce using this method – especially in Kano because the judges that are there are also patriarchal in their thinking – they make the process difficult for a woman to achieve.

IPS: Divorce by means of proclaiming, I divorce you three times. Is this not the normal standard in Islam? MF: To divorce a woman through pronouncing it three times at a go is not found anywhere in Muslim law or contained in the Islamic jurisprudence. It is just that over the years, it has become the tradition. It is out of place.

The Islamic provision is that if you are divorcing a woman, it has to be spread over a three-months period. And the pronouncement must be made during her menstrual period so that she is sure she is not pregnant during the process of the divorce and also to ensure that as they stay together during the process, there might be some kind of reconciliation.

But if a husband pronounces it three times at a go, there will not be any room for reconciliation.

I must also mention that under Islamic understanding, it is stated clearly that divorce is one of the things Allah hates most and does not encourage his adherents to go through that process, but that if it is needed to go through it. They should in order to maintain their sanity.

That is why the pronouncement has to take place over a period of three months. Some couples who adhere to the standard sometimes reconcile after the first or second month.

What is happening especially in Kano is just out of place. It is giving a lot of women who face this challenge a lot of psychological pains and emotional torture.

There is a campaign from women’s rights groups now to really talk about this issue, to raise awareness, even trying to get the men to understand that divorce is something that should be stopped.

IPS: Can better education change the status of women such that they can also ask for their rights in a divorce, for example asking the husband to pay alimony because of the things they have worked to acquire together? MF: I think that when women get information and they are educated, it will enhance their economic status, such that if the men decide to divorce them three times at a go, they can assert their rights and they can establish themselves.

But in terms of educating the men to make them become more responsible, this needs sensitisation and awareness campaign on the part of social workers, NGOs and Islamic scholars.

Divorce is not favourable to women. I find it absurd and I think the government should do something about it. Education can help women to assert their rights, but the law has to make provision for it first before they can seek for such rights.

At the moment there is no provision for compensation for a woman that is divorced. There is nothing in the provision of the Islamic law that a divorced woman should be paid certain amount for being in a relationship for a number of years.

But in wider Islamic jurisprudence, some scholars have identified the need for a due for women who left a relationship as a result of divorce. These include good accommodation and some amount paid to them for their labour in the relationship over the years.

In Nigeria at the moment, there is no such provision. With advocacy, we hope we will get to a point whereby there will be a law in place for their protection.

IPS: Is Baobab doing anything to help divorced women? MF: Baobab has an outreach team in Kano. We also have outreach teams in other states. We have 14 outreach teams most of them in the north. What we do is raise awareness of women and their rights.

They are now aware that nobody can tell them not to go to school. They know that it is important to be economically empowered. These are some of the things that we talk about in the awareness campaigns.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 2 2009 (IPS)

The sectarian violence which broke out in several parts of northern Nigeria at the end of July has more to do with popular anger and frustration with prevailing economic conditions than religion, say religious experts and Muslim groups. Concerns have also been raised about the reaction of security forces.

The violence began in northeastern Bauchi State on Jul 26, when members of a Muslim sect known as Boko Haram (meaning "Western education is forbidden" in Hausa) were arrested on suspicion of planning to attack a police station. In the days that followed, police stations and other government establishments were attacked across four other northern states, Borno, Yobe, Kano and Katsina.

According to the Nigerian Red Cross, 780 people, mostly members of the sect, died in Maiduguri alone, where sect leader Mohammed Yusuf was based. Confrontations between members of the sect and security agents have displaced thousands more, mostly women and children.

The Boko Haram's stated reason for the attacks was to fight against Western education and values. The group, is known to have been tracked by Nigerian security forces for several years, also wanted Islamic law instituted in every part of Nigeria.

Alleged executions raise questions

Police announced that the sect leader Yusuf was killed while trying to escape police custody on the night of Jul. 30, but there are persistent allegations that he was in fact executed after being apprehended. Similar allegations surround the death of one of the sect's wealthy supporters, former Borno State commissioner for religious affairs Alhaji Buji Foi, who was killed while in police custody on Jul. 31.

The Afenifere Renewal Group, a prominent Yoruba socio-political organisation, has called for a probe into the death of Yusuf. Yinka Odumakin, national publicity secretary of the organisation, said while Afenifere was not in support of the actions of the sect, Nigerians would have benefited more if the sect leader was allowed to speak in an open trial.

"We would (then) have known the real motives of his group and its financiers. The large cache of arms and weapons manufacturing centres traced to the group were not something a 39-year old school dropout would have put together without backers," Odumakin said.

"No matter the offences Yusuf and his group might have committed as a human being, he was entitled to right to life under the 1999 constitution until a court pronounced him guilty (and sentenced him to death)."

Amnesty International has also condemned what it called "illegal killings by the Nigerian security forces" and called for an investigation into the killing in detention of Mohammed Yusuf.

Roots of crisis

Professor Murtalal Muhibbu-Din, head of of the department of religion at Lagos State University (LASU), said that the crisis was born out of anger and frustration rather than religious faith.

Muhibbu-Din told IPS in Lagos that the rate at which the problem spread across the north showed that many people, especially unemployed youth, are frustrated and angry with government over their dire economic situation.

"The people are frustrated and they are just looking for any means to confront the government of the day for not providing them the basic necessities of life," he said.

"The teeming unemployed youths can be easily mobilised. What they said they were fighting against, such as Western education and Western values, are just smokescreens to vent their anger on the government. That is why they are attacking police stations, which they see as government establishments."

Boko Haram's hostility to Western education is not one widely shared by Nigeria's estimated 70 million Muslims. According to Muhibbu-Din, Islam does not say people should not seek knowledge, noting that religion generally promotes peace, understanding and brotherliness.

He argued that there is in fact need for the youths to be better educated. "High levels of education – including girl-child education – will help improve the lot of the people and create employment opportunities. They should also be provided with social amenities. Once these are done, the problem of religious or even other crises would be solved."

Empower women to protect them

Senior programmes officer with the non-govermental organisation Baobab for Women’s Rights, Alhaja Mufuliat Fijabi agreed with the don. "The Holy Quran likens education to light, and Muslims – including Muslim women – are encouraged to seek knowledge whether Western or Islamic," she said.

Baobab, which works to defend and develop women's rights in terms of customary, secular and religious laws, noted that large numbers of women and children had been affected by the events of the past week.

"We strongly call on the government both at the state and federal levels to respond promptly to the plight of the displaced persons by providing them with relief materials, health facilities and education," Fijabi said.

The Maiduguri Police Command says that it rescued 180 people abducted in Bauchi by members of the sect and taken to Maiduguri. The state police spokesman, Isa Azare, explained that the women and children were deceived by their husbands and teachers into believing that they were travelling to Maiduguri to attend a religious function.

Fijabi explained that many women, due to a lack of information, education and status within their families, are not in a position to caution or resist their spouses in such situations. She called on NGOs, civil society groups and the government to sensitise women to know what to do in times of crisis beyond running about in confusion worrying about the whereabouts of their children.

"Government should also provide adequately for the law enforcement agents to detect and nip in the bud such crises and also to enable them respond quickly in such situations."

In her private capacity, Fijabi added that behind the recent crises in Nigeria is the lack of avenues for people to air their views leading to frustration and anger.

"If there is a forum where aggrieved persons can come together and discuss, there will not be any pent-up anger which usually bursts into such crises. Citizens, especially youths, should be encouraged to air their views and the government must be ready at all times to listen to them," she said.

Meanwhile, the Jama'atu Nasril Islam (JNI), the umbrella organisation for Muslims in Nigeria, described the masterminds of the crisis as murderers and a gang of criminals.

In a statement, the acting secretary of JNI, Abdulkarim Pallan, was quoted as condemning the attack against Western education saying it was evil and called on security agencies to bring members of the sect to books.

"As the umbrella of Islamic Organisations in the country, Jama'atu Nasril Islam cannot fold its hand and watch the carnage and madness that is going on in the country especially in the North East in the name of Islam.

"We call on all Muslims in the country to condemn these criminal activities and give maximum support to the security agencies in preventing these misguided youths from attacking any body or agencies in the country," Pallan said in the statement.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Oct 21 2008 (IPS)

Amnesty International says that hundreds of those awaiting execution on Nigeria's death row did not have fair trials and may therefore be innocent.

At an Oct. 21 press conference in Abuja, the capital, releasing its latest report on the death penalty in Nigeria, co-authored by the Nigerian rights organisation Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), Amnesty called for an immediate moratorium on executions in the country.

The report, Nigeria: Waiting for the Hangman, exposed a catalogue of failings in Nigeria's criminal justice system, saying that it was "riddled with corruption, negligence and a nearly criminal lack of resources".

More than half of the 720 death penalty convictions were based on confessions which were often extracted under torture.

"Although prohibited in Nigeria, in practice torture by police occurs on a daily basis. Almost 80 percent of inmates in Nigerian prisons say they have been beaten, threatened with weapons or tortured in police cells,'' the report said.

"The police are over-stretched and under-resourced. Because of this, they rely heavily on confessions to 'solve' crimes – rather than on expensive investigations. Convictions based on such confessions are obviously very unsafe," Amnesty’s researcher Aster van Kregten said.

"The judicial system is riddled with flaws that can have devastating consequences. For those accused of capital crimes, the effects are obviously deadly and irreversible."

Chino Obiagwu, LEDAP's national coordinator added that although under Nigerian law confessions given under pressure, threat or torture could not be used as evidence in court, judges took no notice.

"Judges know that there is widespread torture by the police – and yet they continue to sentence suspects to death based on these confessions, leading to many possibly innocent people being sentenced to death."

The Amnesty report said death penalty trials could take more than 10 years to conclude. Some files went missing, leaving the condemned in a limbo and apparently robbing them of their rights to amnesties.

Death row conditions were harsh.

There were also a growing number of children on death row.

"Although international law prohibits the use of the death penalty against child offenders, at least 40 death row prisoners were aged between 13 and 17 at the time of their alleged offence."

"Questions of guilt and innocence are almost irrelevant in Nigeria's criminal justice system," Obiagwu said.

"It is all about if you can afford to pay to keep yourself out of the system – whether that means paying the police to adequately investigate your case, paying for a lawyer to defend you or paying to have your name put on a list of those eligible for pardon.

"Those with the fewest resources are at the greatest risk in Nigeria's criminal justice system."

A bill which would have partially abolished the death penalty in Nigeria was overwhelmingly rejected last July.

Stunned by the degree of opposition, anti-death penalty activists and sponsors are planning a massive public education campaign before a new attempt to abolish the death penalty is made in the next parliamentary session in 2009.

"We intend to carry everybody along in the enlightenment campaign," Friday Itulah, the main sponsor of the rejected bill, told IPS.

"We intend to involve local and international NGOs and the media in addition to organising seminars and workshops."

Itulah said his bill was voted down because of religious sentiment and ignorance.

"From the religious angle, adherents particularly of the Islamic faith were of the view that life is sacred and, therefore, anyone that deprives another of life does not deserve to retain their own."

Although Itulah did not mention him by name, the leading parliamentary opponent of his abolition bill was Sada Soli, an MP from Katsina State in the predominantly Muslim north of the country.

Itulah said people need to be educated to accept the modern view that punishment should be accompanied by efforts to reform the criminal "to atone or give back to the society what he or she has taken".

He implicitly agreed with the views of Amnesty and other NGOs that many on Nigeria's death row may be innocent, saying people were unaware of the possibility of judicial errors.

"There is a lot of work to be done to create awareness in the enlightenment campaign and this will involve a lot of money … this needs to be done to ensure a smooth passage of the (new) bill in the legislature. I strongly believe that someday we will achieve our goal."

One of Nigeria's leading anti-death penalty campaigners and secretary of a presidential commission on the reform of the justice system, Olawale Fapohunda, said everything must be done to prepare the country for the introduction of the abolition bill.

"The first is to show that retention of death penalty in our laws has not been a deterrent to serious crimes.

"We want to focus on the link between property crimes, poverty and the limited opportunities that exist for a large population of Nigerians to work themselves out of poverty.

"Secondly, we note the need to respond to the concerns about crime and the inability of our criminal justice system to respond to the victims of crimes.''

This issue was now addressed before the Senate by a bill on the rights of the victims.

"What is most important now is to attract local support, not only in financial terms, but getting representatives of local pressure groups to support abolition. I think we need to do a lot more on this."

Earlier this month, legislators took up the issue of Nigerians on death rows abroad. All of these are condemned for drug-related crimes and are being denied rights to full legal representation.

A Senate motion called on the government to intervene and press foreign governments to grant these inmates clemency.

In its report, Amnesty said that there were 42 Nigerians on death rows in Indonesia (20), Libya (15), Afghanistan (6) and Saudi Arabia (1).

Between October 2006 and April 2008, Saudi Arabia executed 10 Nigerians for trafficking in drugs, including one woman.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jul 22 2008 (IPS)

Hopes of a reprieve for hundreds of death row inmates in Nigeria were dashed when MPs threw out a bill which would have commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment and down-graded robbery with violence to a non-capital crime.

On July 10, MPs from all sides closed ranks to reject the death penalty abolition bill which would also have lifted the threat of execution hanging over several thousands awaiting capital trials, some of them for many years. Rights activists were stunned by the degree of opposition to the bill, particularly from politicians from the Christian south of the country.

“Nobody shall kill another person – in spite of (their) confessing to the crime,” Friday Itula, the bill’s main sponsor, said when opening the debate on the bill.

“No!” shouted furious MPs opposing this attempt to get these words written into law and “abolish capital punishment in any form”. From this moment on, it was clear that the bill – the first-ever attempt to challenge Nigeria’s death penalty in parliament – was doomed.

Itula argued that capital punishment had outlived its usefulness in Nigeria. It had failed to deliver up on its promises – reformation, retribution or deterrence.

The MP was supported in his abolition initiative by two other members from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Samson Osagie and Patrick Ikhariale.

All three co-sponsors come from Edo state, central southern Nigeria.

Leading the attack on the bill was Sada Soli, also a member of the PDP but from Katsina state in the predominately Muslim north of the country. Activists had predicted that the Muslim states, some of which have introduced Sharia law, would oppose the bill.

“Abolition is a serious business,” Soli said. “The law should take its natural course. Anyone who takes another’s life does not deserve (to keep) his,” he said.

Soli condemned foreign “interference” for pressuring Nigeria to abolish capital punishment.

Listening to his remarks in the parliamentary public gallery were representatives from NGOs, including the London-based Amnesty International.

The bill was finally thrown out when the speaker asked MPs whether it should be rejected.

“Yes,” shouted most MPs in reply.

Later, Dr Olapade Agoro, a politician and chairman of the Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP), said it was too early for Nigeria to abolish capital punishment.

MPs should be spending their time seeking solutions to crime – reducing unemployment and raising the level of education – rather than a “respite for murderers”.

“Most importantly, this idea is being copied from the United Kingdom – and it’s laughable. We must learn to develop our own ideas,” he declared.

Yinka Odumakin, a politician and the national publicity secretary of Afenifere, a socio-cultural organisation in south-eastern Nigeria, added it would have been unwise for Nigeria to abolish capital punishment because of its high crime and murder rate.

“But it (abolition) could be considered in the future when the country becomes more enlightened and the avenues (are) created for people to make wealth,” he said guardedly.

Predictably, Professor Pat Utomi of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and presidential candidate in the April 2007 elections, expressed disappointment at the bill’s rejection. His party is strongly supported by the younger, well-educated generation.

Leading NGOs and human rights campaigners sought to explain the reasons for the scale of the parliamentary opposition to the bill.

Civil society organisations should have been more active before the parliamentary vote, Olawale Fapohunda, managing partner of the rights organisation Legal Resources Consortium, told IPS. Lawmakers had shown they were ruled by an erroneous perception of crime.

But any “effective advocacy” had been hamstrung by lack of resources, he explained.

Demian Ugwu of the Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO) agreed that the MPs had rejected the bill out of fear of crime.

“But to us in the civil society, it is not a security issue but a social one,” he said.

Amnesty International (AI) expressed disappointment, suggesting that the MPs appeared to have ignored its extensive reporting on the human rights situation of those on Nigeria’s death row.

Many death row inmates had not been given a fair trial, including legal representation, or the right of appeal, Ausphus Guesto, an Amnesty researcher told IPS.

There are believed to be more than 500 currently awaiting execution in Nigeria, a country which claims not to have executed anyone since 1999. This claim is disputed by AI and CLO. In 2007, Nigerian courts passed down at least 20 death sentences, according to AI.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jul 7 2008 (IPS)

Three Nigerian MPs have stepped in to end years of political inertia over ending the death penalty in Africa’s most populous nation, forcing a parliamentary debate and vote on their Private Members’ Bill for abolition.

National Assembly officials still have to give a firm date for the bill’s first reading and debate. But sources told IPS that it was expected to be tabled for reading within the next three months.

“Nobody can say when the bill will be debated until it is listed for debate. But I believe within the next few months action will start on the bill and Nigeria is likely to join the ranks of abolitionist countries before the end of the tenure of the present House (2010),” a National Assembly official, who declined to give his name for publication, told IPS on telephone from the capital Abuja.

The already-tabled bill seeks to abolish the death penalty for crimes ranging from murder to armed robbery. If passed, some 500 death row inmates would have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. The threat of the gallows would also be removed from thousands of others currently awaiting death penalty trials.

Nigeria’s death penalty laws had failed to deliver on all three goals they were supposed to address – reformation, retribution and deterrence, the Bill’s chief sponsor, Friday Itulah, has argued in support of his initiative. Itulah and the bill’s two other co-sponsors – Samson Osagie and Patrick Ikhariale – are members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

“The question is how can you reform someone – enable him to become a more useful person in the society – who is sentenced to death?” Itulah asked with apparent irony.

“The idea behind the policy of retribution is to inflict severe punishment for something seriously wrong that somebody has done.

“(But) in this country, people have been sentenced to death for offences that did not involve the taking of the life of another, offences such as mutiny, trafficking in currencies and treasonable felony,” Itulah argued.

He added: “This policy erroneously assumes that all persons convicted of these serious crimes committed the offences. But people are sometimes punished in error for the offences they never committed.”

Olawale Fapohunda, managing partner of the Legal Resources Consortium, a Lagos-based NGO, believes many people in Nigeria may have been punished or executed for offences they did not commit.

“The challenges presently faced by our criminal justice system are such that we cannot guarantee fairness in the application of the death penalty,” Fapohunda told IPS.

“Expunging the death penalty from our laws is just one step on the road to achieving a criminal justice reform in Nigeria,” he said.

Fapohunda, whose organisation has been fighting for seven years for an abolition bill to be tabled in parliament, is one of the most experienced rights activists and lawyers in the country. He was secretary of a recent presidential commission on the reform of the criminal justice system.

He argues that hysteria rather than facts have fueled the calls for yet stiffer penal sentences and the retention of the death penalty.

“We have a prison population of 40,000. Put this against our population of 140 million, you may agree that the sums simply don’t add up. Either the hullabaloo about the state of crime in Nigeria is false or the police are simply not catching the offenders,” he said.

He believes that capital punishment is not a deterrent to serious crime.

“The solution to crime will never be the killing of robbers. The government needs to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in our society. While poverty is no excuse for crime, implementing a coherent, sustainable and well-thought out poverty reduction strategy will certainly go a long way towards creating an equitable society,” he said.

Lawrence Quakar of the Human Rights Law Service believes the abolition of the death penalty would result in a big drop in the number of most serious crimes committed in Nigeria.

Robbers sometimes kill their victims to eliminate anyone who could later testify against them, he argued to IPS.

So far, the news of the abolition bill has attracted little comment. But this is likely to change quickly as soon as a parliamentary debate is underway.

“With the sensitive nature of the matter of death penalty in the country, the bill will surely generate a lot of controversy in the House. But if we must follow the trend in many countries that have abolished death penalty, the bill may have its way,” predicted James Ogenyi, a Lagos-based civil servant.

Most opposition is likely to come from the Muslim communities, particularly in the north of the country where Islam Sharia law was introduced in some states almost a decade ago.

Muhammad Yahaya, executive director of the Democratic Action Group based in the north state of Kano, said he opposed the bill.

“It is like legalising crime. The current rate of killings either through robbery or religious riots shows that human life means nothing to us. As far as I am concerned, Nigeria is not ripe for the abolition of death penalty,” Yahaya told IPS.

Quoting the Koran, the activist said, he who kills should also be killed in punishment. “If a person knows he will be pardoned after committing such a crime, he will not have any regard for human life.”

Although Nigeria claims to have observed an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1999, Amnesty International (AI) has reported that it has evidence of some executions in the past two years in the northern state of Kano. AI claims the execution warrants were signed by the state governor, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau.

The Civil Liberties Organisation, a major NGO, told IPS that it was possible that secret executions had also taken place in Enugu state, southeastern Nigeria.

The newspaper Daily Trust, published in the capital Abuja, recently printed an opinion article by Adamu Adamu accusing pro-abolition MPs of “a colonial hangover” in attempting to abolish the death penalty.

“We should have no business campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty. Rather, we should campaign for its extension … Confirmed, willful killers in this land must be cut down, irrespective of what they do to them in Europe,” Adamu wrote.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jul 23 2007 (IPS)

It is a paradox of note: the fact that while Nigerians live in the world&#39s sixth-largest oil producer, most of them still rely on wood for their fuel.

Of the country&#39s population of over 140 million, about 70 percent live in rural areas and are directly or indirectly dependent on forest resources – especially wood – to meet their domestic energy needs, says Musa Amiebinomo of the national Department of Forestry.

This is leading to destruction of forest cover, a situation aggravated by illegal commercial logging.

Figures from the 2005 &#39 State of the World&#39s Forests&#39 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicate that between 1990 and 2005, Nigeria lost 35.7 percent of its forest cover.

Boniface Egboka, an environmentalist and dean of the School of Postgraduate Studies at Anambra State University in south-eastern Nigeria, blames the continued use of firewood on corruption.

"Nigeria is still dependent of firewood when we have abundant oil and gas because our so-called leaders are fraudulent and corrupt. They care less about the welfare of the citizens and so they allow the forests to be mowed down," he told IPS.

"We have no reason to be using firewood. We have the financial and human resources to pipe gas into homes for domestic use…We are deforesting the whole of the north through harvesting of wood for fire, and now we are shifting the savannah southwards into the rain forest through logging."

Nigeria&#39s first forestry act was passed by the British colonial authorities in 1937. It established a forest reserve system under which certain areas could be exploited for timber by firms and individuals granted licenses to do so. Replanting was expected to prevent these areas from becoming depleted.

The 1988 National Agricultural Policy further sought to ensure sustainable use of forests, and to expand wooded land to 20 percent of the country&#39s territory. According to the FAO report, 12.2 percent of Nigeria&#39s land is currently forested.

While there is currently no law against the felling of trees for firewood except in protected areas, chopping of oil palms and of mango, cashew, cocoa and cola-nut trees is controlled through by-laws because of the economic value of such trees.

But, legislation alone has proved unable to protect Nigeria&#39s forests.

"There are forests called priority areas or nature conservation areas, which means logging is not permitted at all. But…even where you have these laws, people do not obey them – and nothing happens to illegal loggers," said Peter Nwilo, co-ordinator of the Regional Centre for Environmental Information Management System at the University of Lagos.

Even loggers who obtain felling licenses are known to act illegally, harvesting trees of all sizes, including those considered too young to be chopped down. However, certain officials in the state forestry departments, where permission to log is usually obtained, continue to renew the yearly licenses of these loggers, allegedly as a result of bribes from logging firms.

Notes Philip Asiodu, president of the Nigeria Conservation Foundation, a non-governmental organisation based in the financial hub of Lagos: &#39&#39It is not the lack of good laws or policies and programmes (that is at issue), but simply the lack of will and discipline to observe and implement them by a compromised, corrupt bureaucracy."

Illegal loggers mostly ship timber abroad, particularly to Asia. Some of the logs are also sold to local lumber mills, which produce planks for sale to Nigerian furniture companies, and builders.

The depletion of forest cover has been especially severe in central and northern Nigeria, opening the door to soil erosion and desertification. It is widely reported that 350,000 hectares of land in the country are lost to desertification annually.

So, where does the solution to all these problems lie?

A government blueprint for developing Nigeria in the period until 2010 – &#39Vision 2010&#39 – has suggested measures that include a ban on the export of logs, incentives for private investment in forests, greater community participation in forest management – and the encouragement of reforestation with species yielding fruit, gum, and other crops that are of economic value to communities.

&#39Vision 2010&#39 also calls for the development and promotion of other energy sources, such as solar and wind power, and the use of gas and coal, as alternatives to wood.

In 1999 authorities initiated plans to pipe Nigeria&#39s abundant natural gas for commercial and domestic use. But to date, only a few industrial areas in Lagos have benefited from this project.

&#39&#39We are presently trying to link industrial estates with gas…Domestic users will come on stream much later because we need to plan the network. Most residential areas in Lagos are not well planned, and this will make the piping of gas into residential houses for domestic use a bit difficult. But it will be done eventually,&#39&#39 says an official from Gaslink, a subsidiary of the OANDO petroleum company, which is carrying out the gas piping project in Lagos.

This means that people who want to use gas in their homes are still obliged to buy cylinders at about 21 dollars each to use on portable gas stoves that sell for between 80 and about 165 dollars – prices beyond the reach of many.

"I cannot remember when last I used my gas stove. I still have the two gas cylinders in my store, hoping for a day when gas will be cheaper," Caroline Akande, a school teacher in Iwaya, a suburb of Lagos, told IPS. "Presently I use a kerosene stove, and an electric stove whenever there is electricity."

According to the 2006 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, 70.8 percent of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day – and 92.4 percent on less than two dollars per day.

In the absence of effective measures to safeguard Nigeria&#39s forestry resources, an increasing number of areas are likely to go the way of Ogori village, in central Kogi state.

"When we were growing up in the sixties, we used to go into the dense forests that surrounded our village to collect snails or set traps for rodents and other animals," John Atere, another teacher, told IPS.

"But today the forests are no longer there, and snails and wild animals have disappeared."

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, May 30 2007 (IPS)

The return of democracy to Nigeria in 1999 after years of military dictatorship has not brought an end to extra-judicial killings; rather, the number may have doubled in what is now often a daily occurrence, says the Civil Liberties Organisation – a human rights group based in the financial hub of Lagos.

”While the period of military dictatorship made the wanton destruction of lives and property near state policy, the new democratic administration has quite shockingly witnessed the aggravation of this ugly phenomenon of unlawful killings of innocent civilians by security agents, especially the police,” notes a report issued by the grouping in past months.

The study focuses on the six years from May 1999 to June 2005. But Damian Ugwu, its author and head of the organisation’s law enforcement project, told IPS that the situation had not improved since. ”We have seen an enormous increase in the number of extra-judicial killings in the past eight years,” he said. These were being carried out by the police, army and state-sponsored vigilante groups.

Extra-judicial killings are executions not sanctioned by law. Under Nigeria’s criminal code, an unlawful killing of a human being is a criminal offence punishable by death.

The Civil Liberties Organisation estimates that on average at least five people are killed every day in extra-judicial circumstances in Nigeria. Most of the killings are said to be at police stations: it’s alleged that armed robbery suspects are summarily executed there in the course of investigations. Police claim the killings happen while they are trying to prevent suspects from escaping.

“That figure of five a day is a very conservative one,” Ugwu said, adding that there were also unreported cases in local police stations and vigilante cells. And, it did not take into account what was now happening in the Niger Delta – the troubled, oil-rich region where police and the army are struggling against growing militancy.

The Civil Liberties Organisation report blames the deteriorating economic situation for the rise in extra-judicial killings. Despite the huge increase in oil revenues during the final years of former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s term in office, more than 80 percent of Nigeria’s 140 million people still live on less than a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme. This situation had led to growth in gun crime, robbery and kidnappings.

Obasanjo stepped down from office this week. During his eight years in power, some 500,000 workers lost their jobs, Ugwu said. Many were left destitute, struggling to maintain their families. “Children cannot go to school because they cannot pay the school fees. Many of them, youths under 20 years of age, have joined cults and gangs and taken to crime,” he added.

The police were “overwhelmed” by the growth in lawlessness. “So what they do is try to eliminate the problem through extra-judicial killings,” Ugwu said. “They think if you kill this person, he is not going to come back and disturb you again. They are resorting to extra-judicial killings to reduce the number of perceived criminals.”

The police were also turning on the people because of resentment over their own economic situation, Ugwu noted. “A policeman who has not been paid for months is angry. They are being prevented now from taking bribes at check-points. But then they see government officials and politicians stealing millions, so they turn their anger on society.”

IPS reports that governors of states where vigilante groups have been set up claim they are needed to deal with the high incidence of armed robbery. These groups have also been accused of the unlawful execution of alleged criminals.

The outgoing Nigerian government did step in to ban some of these groups, such as the Bakassi boys. It charged they were being used for political purposes.

Only rarely have the authorities acted on complaints of extra-judicial killings, Ugwu said. ”In the past eight years, very few policemen have been brought to book by the government or by the police authorities.” He knew of no case where a soldier had been accused in court of being involved in extra-judicial killings.

The authorities only ever took action after a public outcry. This happened after the killing of six young people by police in Apo in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, two years ago. According to an Aug. 22, 2006 statement from Amnesty International, “…the so-called ‘Apo 6’ – five young Igbo male traders and a female student – were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery and executed while in custody in Abuja. In this case, their dead bodies were paraded as armed robbers killed in a shoot-out with the police…”

Noted Ugwu: “That was a peculiar case because at the time Nigeria was looking for a seat in the U.N. Security Council. A U.N. special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings was also due to visit Nigeria. The government needed to do something, so it set up an enquiry. But since then, thousands have been killed and nothing has been done.”

The activist acknowledged that the level of extra-judicial killings was also high during military rule. But, towns and villages were never razed to the ground by soldiers and police in retaliation over killings while the military was in command of the country – while this had happened to the town of Odi in Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta in November 1999. Two years later soldiers stormed the Zaki Biam and Vaase communities in Benue State, central Nigeria. Many hundreds of civilians died, activists have alleged.

IPS approached the Lagos police to comment on the allegations by the rights organisation and Ugwu. A spokesman denied knowledge of any summary executions in Lagos State over the past two years – the period that he had been in his post. “There has not been any extra-judicial killing. That is my comment,” Olubode Ojajuni, a police public relations officer, said.

The Civil Liberties Organisation said it was this unwillingness by the police to admit to the problem that had caused the group to embark on a “vigorous” public awareness campaign that was also targeting government officials and the international community. In addition, it had set up a network – the National Alert on Torture and Extra- judicial Killings – to monitor acts of torture and extra-judicial executions. The network had more than 3,000 members around the country.

”We are hoping that one day, somebody, somewhere, will come up and say ‘These people should account for their sins’,” said Ugwu.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Apr 16 2007 (IPS)

“You see the fear in their eyes. When someone has been on death row for 10 to 20 years and a strange face comes closer, he thinks the hangman is probably coming to take him to the gallows.”

John Oziegbe, a legal officer with the Legal Resource Consortium in Lagos, was describing the ever-present dread of execution that haunts Nigeria’s estimated 700 death row prisoners.

But visitors from the outside world stepping through the gates of Kirikiri maximum security prison in Lagos, where he often visits to give legal aid to inmates, were also likely to quake in their shoes even before setting eyes on a prisoner, he suggested in an interview with IPS.

“Nobody would think that human beings are kept in such places,” Oziegbe said. At Kirikiri there was a separate building for the condemned. It was falling apart. “The structure is very bad, almost collapsing,” he added.

Prison officials agree that nearly all of Nigeria’s 227 prisons are like this.

“It is sad that the conditions in most of our prisons, even to the most casual observer, are dehumanising,” Gabriel Oloyede, deputy comptroller general of prisons, said candidly at last year’s opening of a new prison hospital at Kuje, in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. “Most of the prisons are still brutal and squalid.”

But he assured those attending the inauguration of one of the five new show-case prison hospitals that measures were being taken “to improve services”. His example was how the mortality rate in Nigerian prisons had been reduced from 1,500 to less than 400 a year.

Nigeria’s minister of internal affairs, Magaji Muhammed, also chose this opportunity to note that the “monster” issue of prison overcrowding was recognised by officials. “This is why the president set up various committees to look into problems confronting the administration of justice and prison reforms in general,” he said.

IPS has obtained a document from the key presidential commission on the reform of the administration of justice, which reports that more than half the country’s 40,000 prison inmates have not even been tried or sentenced. Some have been waiting for their trials for over ten years. The overcrowding this caused was “not conducive to the efficient application of rehabilitation and reintegration programmes” it said.

The situation showed that the entire criminal justice system in Nigeria was in a state of “dislocation”, the report suggested. Last year a U.N. special rapporteur also found that the situation was so chaotic that some 3.7 percent of all case files of inmates had been lost.

Chronic but preventable diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia were also present in the prisons, the report said, adding that the principal cause of these was the decaying buildings and poor prison diet. “In most prisons inmates are being provided with meals that fall short of the minimum dietary requirements,” the report observed.

The official daily prison food allowance now stands at about 83 U.S. cents. In the days of the military regimes before the return to civilian government in 1999, it was less than half of this. More than 70 percent of Nigeria’s 140 million people live on less than one dollar a day, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

The report put much of the blame for the situation on the long years of neglect by successive military regimes. But it also said that “several years of neglect by successive governments” had left the prisons “at the lowest ebb”.

The commission, which has already submitted its report to President Olusegun Obasanjo, has made a string of bold proposals that could transform the penal system in Nigeria overnight – and the lives of those living in daily fear of execution.

Everyone on death row for more than 15 years should be released, it recommended. All on death row for more than 10 years and the sick or mentally ill should have their cases reviewed. And, all others condemned to death û the number is put at 111, but is steadily increasing û should have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

The commission has also recommended that all inmates jailed for more than five years whose case files have been lost should be set free.

“We need an official (death penalty) moratorium,” Olawale Fapohunda, secretary of the commission, told IPS. “Officially the constitution allows the death penalty but we are trying to see how the constitution can be changed for the commuting of all those sentences to life imprisonment as it is done in South Africa,” he said.

The last known official execution in Nigeria was carried out under the late General Sani Abacha when environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni activists were executed in 1995.

While the commission has been at work, Nigeria’s law-makers have been discussing a bill to enlarge and modernise the country’s entire penal system. This is still being debated.

Just when the bill will be adopted, no one can say, but Fapohunda said the commission was working hard to see it was adopted during the term of the present assembly. ”The bill has passed a second reading,” he said.

“It was first presented to the house in 1999, but because it was not adopted in the first four years it started all over again. We want to ensure that it is adopted now, otherwise the next parliament will start it all over again.”

He said more than 200 of Nigeria’s death row prisoners could benefit from a presidential pardon to mark the country’s Democracy Day on May 29, when a new government is expected to be inaugurated.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 19 2007 (IPS)

Some 600 people are now crammed into Nigeria’s disease-infested death rows and the number is certain to rise with a justice system that critics say has been resisting reform since the end of military rule in 1999.

The situation was highlighted dramatically this month when the U.N.’s special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, ended a week-long visit here on Mar. 10. He charged there were only a “few tangible results” from efforts to reform the justice system, and one death row inmate had been waiting there for more than 20 years.

Novak levelled grave charges against the Nigerian police for breaking the law with impunity and extracting confessions and information by force. Abuse of suspects was “systemic” and “routine”, he said at a press conference ending his visit.

“Detainees are beaten up. They are suspended from the ceilings for prolonged periods and beaten in that position as a way for the police to extract confessions or other information.” The police also shot at their legs.

He also said the justice system discriminated against the poor, who could not pay for lawyers. Femi Falana, a lawyer and human rights activist from the Campaign for Democracy suggested to IPS that the situation could be even worse than Novak described. The visit was an official one and he believed Novak was given a “guided tour”.

Activists campaigning for death row inmates have long claimed that some may have been wrongly sentenced because of improper investigations by the police, while those who had the money could buy their way to freedom. Nowak’s charges are likely to be taken up by activists in their efforts to remove the lingering threat to execution which hangs over what must now be one of the largest death row populations in the world.

The last known executions in Nigeria were in November 1995 when Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other Ogoni environmental activists were hanged during the era of General Sani Abacha who ruled from 1993 to 1998. But there could have been secret executions since the return to civilian rule.

A government-appointed committee on reform of the country’s justice and prison system produced its first report in 2005. It recommended the release of all those who had been on death row for more than 10 years. It also called for the swift execution of all others who had exhausted their appeals, according to a copy of the report received by the Campaign for Democracy. This was suggested as a way of reducing overcrowding in the country’s prisons.

The report is said to have criticised all levels of officials involved in Nigeria’s capital punishment system. Appeals were sometimes long delayed. Officials failed to prepare execution orders for signatures. State governors ignored them when they arrived or failed to exercise their pardoning rights.

The government did not accept the committee’s recommendations, sending it back to do a more thorough job. Its reported recommendation that death row numbers should be reduced by executions has been strongly criticised by the Campaign for Democracy.

John Uziegbe, a legal officer with the Legal Resource Consortium in the commercial hub of Lagos, believes that the way the system now operates shows that Nigerian governors are collectively observing a moratorium on the death penalty. “Most state governors are not ready to sign death warrants, not because of lack of political will but more an unwillingness to kill,” he told IPS.

“They do not want to associate themselves with taking lives.”

He added that Nigerian politicians knew from experience that capital punishment was no deterrent to crime. “Even under the military when public executions of armed robbers were carried out in the locality of the criminal, crimes were being committed in the vicinity at the same time,” he said.

Other activists and many lawyers agree that capital punishment is unrelated to crime levels. “We have a growing crime rate because our government has not been able to provide for its citizens. So many unemployed youths are pushed into crime to survive,” Lawrence Quakar, a lawyer and member of the Human Rights Law Service, said.

“If the government had performed its duties by providing the people with basic necessities of life, we would not have cause to start arguing whether the death penalty should be expunged from the constitution,” he added, saying that a return to state executions would make criminals even more violent. Unofficially, the unemployment rate is 60 percent.

Besides campaigning for a formal death penalty ban, rights activists have been pressing for an improvement in the conditions for Nigeria’s estimated 40,000 prison population. Inmates are said to sleep on bare boards in overcrowded cells. Disease, especially tuberculosis, was rife with many dying because of inadequate medical treatment, Uziegbe said.

“Conditions in prisons are very terrible. From what I have seen there, the people awaiting trial suffer more than those already convicted. They are crammed into cells and not taken care of since there’s no money for them,” he said.

The U.N.’s Nowak also raised the issue of medical attention in prisons at his press conference in Lagos. He said the victims of police torture were left without medical treatment for the injuries inflicted.

Nowak’s eventual report on Nigeria’s justice and prison system may well increase the number of Nigerians in favour of a constitutional ban on the death penalty – although a spate of gun crime and armed robberies, especially in Lagos, is also certain to keep the numbers in favour of capital punishment high. There are even some who would like to extend the number of capital offences.

“Capital punishment is the best antidote to the high level of corruption in Nigeria,” said Bilikisu Amoda, a school teacher from Lagos. “If President Obasanjo’s anti-corruption crusade is to work, those convicted of corruption should be executed as in China. Many Nigerians have died though the actions and inaction of corrupt officials.”

But the enormous interest in Novak’s statement and the outpouring of public sympathy over the hanging in Singapore of a 19-year-old Nigerian found guilty of drug smuggling last January, suggest the numbers opposing capital punishment are rising. Civil society groups not only condemned Singapore’s government over the hanging, but also their own for being slow to react and failing to prevent the execution.

The press compared the case to that of the well-known Nigerian actress, Hassanat Taiwo, who was arrested in Lagos for trying to smuggle cocaine out of the country to England. She admitted the offence and was able to pay an eight thousand dollar fine and go free in January.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Feb 12 2007 (IPS)

Nothing seems to stir up emotions more than census in Nigeria. That’s why some Nigerians are still contesting the results of the 2006 census, announced by President Olusegun Obasanjo late last month.

Some of the country’s 36 states have rejected the outcome of the exercise, which is provisional. The final result is expected to be released towards the end of the year or early next year, according to the country’s National Population Commission (NPC).

Spearheading the campaign, Lagos state governor, Bola Tinubu, has called for a recount. His officials and community leaders cannot come to terms with the fact that the population of the northern city of Kano has surpassed that of Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria. According to the 2006 census, Kano’s population now stands at about 9.4 million, while that of Lagos – in southern Nigeria – lags behind at around 9.1 million.

‘’We want a recount in Lagos State. This is the height of corruption; falsifying census figures just to please some people. No amount of adjustment done to the figures can make it right,” said Tinubu last week.

A parallel census, conducted by the Lagos State in collaboration with the NPC, put Lagos’s population at more than 17.5 million, Tinubu said.

‘’The World Bank household survey done in collaboration with the Lagos State Office of Statistics in 2006 showed that the average household size was six,” said Obafemi Hamzat, Lagos State Commissioner for Science and Technology.

‘’If by NPC admission, the about 4.9 million household forms were filled and scanned using an extremely conservative figure of four persons per household, the population of Lagos State should be around 19.6 million,” Hamzat said.

An investigation by IPS in some suburbs of the city shows that most tenants live in one room within a bungalow with their family. Except for rooms occupied by bachelors, no less than an average of six persons live in each room particularly in poor suburbs.

For over a decade, Lagos has been known to have the worst traffic jam in Africa. And the worst degradation to the environment which at one time gave the metropolis the appellation of the dirtiest city as a result of the huge garbage generated daily.

Local pastor Martins Iwuanyawu of the Leadership Watch, a Lagos-based Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), involved in the development of youths for leadership role, believes manipulations play a major role in census. ‘’The (population) commission made a terrible mess of the exercise. For example, the provisional figure shows there are more men than women and more adults than youths. This calls for scientific research,” he said.

The 2006 census puts Nigeria’s population at more than 140 million; with male constituting 71.7 million (51.22 percent), while female 68.3 million (48.78 percent).

Northern Nigeria, as in previous headcounts, recorded more population than the south. But, this time, the gap has widened by more than 10 million. In the 1991 census, the north had 46.2 million persons, while the south had 42.8 million. In the 2006 census, the north recorded 75 million persons, while the south 65 million respectively.

More than 265 million dollars was spent on the census. The United Nations contributed 52 percent of the budget. The British Department for International Development (DFID) supported the exercise with satellite imaging for the Area Enumeration Demarcation (AED) at about 57,000 dollars. The European Union contributed 113 million Euro (about 15 million dollars), according to the NPC.

Since independence from Britain in 1960, census in Nigeria has always been controversial as figures are often manipulated and bloated for political and economic reasons. The creation of new states and local governments is based on the land area and population, while budgetary allocations to the states and local governments are also based on the population of an area.

Post-independence headcounts, held in 1962 after much disaffection, was rescheduled for 1963. Though, the result of the 1963 census which put Nigeria at 55.66 million was disputed, it had remained the reference point which the government and the international institutions based their projections till 1991 when the military conducted another failed census. The 1991 census, which put Nigeria’s population at 88.5 million, was also disputed with over 100 court cases instituted against the NPC.

The 2006 headcount was headed for problems right from the initial stages because of some noticeable hitches. For example, some trained enumerators in some states abandoned their duty posts to protest non-payment of their allowances. In the oil-rich Rivers State, some 400 enumerators disappeared, along with vital materials, after collecting their training allowances.

There were also reports of disruption of the census in eastern Nigeria by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). This militia group is fighting for the establishment of the ‘’State of Biafra” – the name adopted by the easterners during their failed secession bid in 1966 that led to a 30-month civil war (1966-1970).

Critics also complained that the five days set aside for the exercise were grossly inadequate considering the number of questions contained in the NPC forms and called for its extension. They also argued that the timing of the exercise, conducted during the rainy season, affected the movement of enumerators in the south, especially Lagos state, which records high rainfall than the north.

‘’Based on facts available from the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), I believe Nigeria’s population should be between 170 and 180 million by now à some states have also complained that they were undercounted,” said pastor Iwuanyawu.

He attributed Nigeria’s population growth to ignorance and lack of a clear-cut birth control policy.

‘’There is still so much ignorance and this has helped the population to grow. Nigerians, especially from the (Muslim) north, do not know they have to control birth. The government too, does not have a clear-cut population control like other countries. So our population will continue to grow,” said Iwuanyawu.

It’s most likely that the contested errors would be fixed before the final results are released.

‘’The final figure for the census may take six to eight months from now à perhaps next year to release. The task of presenting an error-free result is enormous,” Sumaila Makama, NPC chairman, told donor agencies at a dinner function in Lagos recently.

02121837 ORP008 NNNN

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
KAJOLA VILLAGE, Nigeria, Feb 3 2007 (IPS)

China is extending a hand into the Nigerian transport sector in a deal to help the Nigerian government put back on track the country’s foundering railway system.

China’s offer of a grant and expertise comes after the formulation of a 25-year comprehensive railway development plan that includes redesign of the existing railway tracks and expansion of the lines to new areas across Nigeria.

In October 2006, the government signed a 2.5 billion U.S. dollar loan facility with China, a substantial part of which will be used to finance the refurbishment of the railway system.

A major portion of the railway expansion project will be carried out by China’s Civil Engineering Construction Company (CCECC), which was also invited in 1996 by the late General Sani Abacha’s regime to revamp the railway. The regime was widely reviled at that time over the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni environmental activists.

In all, an estimated 7,800 kilometres of standard gauge railway network, to connect all 36 state capitals and major cities in the country, will be built by concession-holders, which then will be responsible for infrastructure upgrades, expansion and maintenance, and train operations.

The CCECC is handling the first phase of the project, put at 8.3 billion dollars. Some of the phases will be financed through private investors over a period of time. The entire railway modernisation and expansion project is estimated to cost over 30 billion dollars.

A consortium of international and domestic private investors and banks have already come together to offer 1.4 billion dollars over 10 years for the development of rail infrastructure and services, according to Transport Minister Habib Aliu.

The contract for the first phase covering 1,315 km of double-track, standard gauge line (1,435mm) from the commercial centre of Lagos in the southwest to Kano in the north – with a branch from Minna (central Nigeria) to Abuja, Nigeria’s capital – was signed Oct. 30, 2006 by Nigeria and the CCECC.

This phase of the project, to be completed within the next four years, was flagged off in November, in this sleepy village of Kajola in western Nigeria, some 70 km from Lagos, by President Olusegun Obasanjo.

“Kajola”, in the Yoruba language spoken in western Nigeria, means “let us all prosper together”. Prosperity may soon come its way but the village may no longer know serenity, as it is providing 120 acres of land for the first locomotive repair workshop and shunting yards.

The railway modernisation and expansion project will be operated and managed as a private sector organisation and will be able to run 36 trains per day, from Lagos to Kano and back – and move about 40 million tonnes of goods per year. Currently, the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) is fully owned by the Nigerian government.

Today, goods are transported mostly by road, with frequent damage during accidents due to the bad state of most highways. Perishable goods like tomatoes and other foods, which are moved from the north to the cities in the south, become spoilt during the long truck trips. It takes about five days for a cargo truck to travel from Maiduguri in the northwest to Lagos: a distance of 1,680 km.

The railway modernisation is one of the key components of the government’s economic reform package, aimed at a 10-percent annual growth rate and a 13-percent yearly growth rate for the transport sector. Nigeria’s economic growth stands at about 2.6 percent, according to figures released by the Federal Office of Statistics for November 2006.

“Today’s historic ground-breaking ceremony and flag-off of the standard double-gauge rail line from Lagos to Kano marks the first major step in Nigeria’s quest for a modern railway system to drive and complement our economy regeneration efforts,” said Obasanjo.

He stressed the multiplier effect of the project on job creation, technology development, economic improvement of communities along the rail routes, and of the nation at large – as well as the development of railway-related industries.

Nigeria’s railway system has continued to decline in the last two decades due to financial and administrative problems, and corruption, leading to ageing and dilapidated infrastructure, and unpaid salaries and pensions for retirees of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), a government entity.

And passengers have abandoned the trains. Statistics from the NRC made available to IPS show that rail passengers declined from 14 million in 1980 to less than one million in 2005, while freight traffic fell from three million tonnes to less than half a million tonnes during the same period.

Railway pensioners are still owed 3.2 billion naira (about 256 million dollars), according to Simeon Babatunde, general secretary of NRC Pensions Welfare Association.

IPS learnt that the NRC has a pension bill of 250 million naira (about two million dollars) a month, a salary bill of 210 million naira (about 1.68 million dollars) a month, while the corporation generates revenue of only 22 million naira (about 176,000 dollars) a month.

But why is China interested in investing so much in this West African country?

Experts say the Asian giant needs raw materials, especially oil – which Nigeria has in abundance – for its fast-growing industry as well as outlets to sell its cheaply-produced products.

Ogaba Oche, a senior researcher at the government-run Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, says China is the fastest growing economy worldwide and is in search of the main ingredients for its industrial growth.

“Petroleum happens to be most needed for that growth. The Chinese economy is also booming, so is looking for outlets, and Nigeria is providing the outlet, being the largest market (more than 120 million people) in Africa. It is a prime area in China’s economic boom,” adds Oche.

China’s national petroleum company, CNOOC, is already involved in oil exploration in Nigeria. In May 2006, the firm secured four oil exploration blocks, after President Hu Jintao visited Abuja in April.

China is investing four billion dollars in oil and infrastructure projects in Nigeria in return for the four drilling licenses. According to the deal reached between presidents Obasanjo Hu Jintao, China will also buy a controlling stake in the Kaduna refinery in north-central Nigeria. The refinery has capacity for refining 110,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Oche told IPS in an interview that the Chinese have a better understanding of Nigeria’s economy than the developed countries of the West: “A large part of China is still rural and on the same economic development level as we are, so they understand us better. The Chinese government also deals with developing countries on the basis of equality, and they are not tampering with the internal economy and politics of the African countries.”

But Shina Loremikan, director of the Lagos-based Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), does not agree that the Chinese foray in Africa is all good news. However, he welcomes Chinese investment as a positive development for the growth of the West African country.

“In spite of a declaration at the first China-Africa Cooperation Forum in 2000, which stated that the Chinese government would cooperate in stopping the illegal production, circulation and trafficking of small arms and light weapons in Africa, reports show that Chinese light arms are found in the Congo and other troubled regions of Africa. That should not be,” Loremikan told IPS.

China’s relations with African governments that have poor human rights records, such as Zimbabwe and Sudan, he said, is not in the best interest of the African Union’s quest for democracy on the continent.

He also cautions against totally opening up of the local market to Chinese products.

“The opening up of Nigeria’s market to Chinese products such as textiles is a threat to the existence of local companies. We have witnessed the closure of several textile mills in the last few years due mainly to the influx of uncontrolled cheap cloths from Asia. That is injurious to the development of our local industry,” he said.

However, international affairs expert Ogaba does not see any negative economic consequences for Nigeria in particular or Africa in general: “China sees itself as a Third World country and is coming into the African economy without the usual structural reforms that western institutions demand. Even in areas where they advance loans to us, they do not carry high interest rates as those of the western institutions.”

Over the past three to four years Chinese leaders have embarked on tours of Africa, lobbying governments for the mineral resources China’s fast growing economy needs, and promising economic deals and grants. This has borne fruit, as 48 African leaders – including Nigeria’s Obasanjo – were in Beijing in November for the third China-African Summit where bilateral agreements were signed.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Oct 30 2006 (IPS)

It’s certainly a logical suggestion: in an effort to make cocoa-producing countries in Africa less dependent on consumers abroad, why not increase domestic consumption of cocoa products?

While Africa produces more than 75 per cent of the world’s cocoa, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the continent consumes only about two percent of this produce. The remainder goes to Europe and the United States which, some claim, have too big a say over cocoa prices as a result – prices that are set without much consideration for production costs.

A glut of cocoa has also played a part in forcing down prices fetched by the commodity on the international market. In addition, European cocoa buyers have tied lower prices to bad quality cocoa beans from Africa.

“The most pragmatic way for Africa to control what goes to the international market in order to influence the cocoa price, is to significantly increase local consumption within Africa,” says Abiodun Falusi, professor of agricultural economics at the University of Ibadan in south-western Nigeria.

“African countries, though the largest producers, cannot influence prices (of cocoa) due to bulk export of raw cocoa beans, low level of domestic consumption…and weak demand in the major consuming countries – which calls for the development of a sustainable policy framework for African cocoa in the world market.”

In fact, a resolution on increasing local consumption of cocoa was taken during a meeting of eight African cocoa producing nations during May this year, in Nigeria’s capital – Abuja. (The attending states comprised Cote d’ Ivoire – the world’s largest cocoa producer – and Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo and Uganda.)

The countries agreed that this should be achieved through development of cocoa consumption habits, raising awareness amongst citizens of the nutritional and health benefits of cocoa products – and encouraging research, development and commercialisation of new cocoa products.

“We all agreed at the Abuja summit that we will encourage the local consumption of a higher proportion of cocoa…because when we consume a lot of it locally, we will be in a position to reduce what goes out to the international market, and by this we can control prices,” Akinwale Ojo, executive secretary of the Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN), told IPS in an interview from Akure, in south-west Nigeria. CAN is an umbrella organisation for the country’s cocoa farmers, processors, buyers and exporters.

But implementing this resolution is likely to prove something of a challenge, said Angela Okisor, an agriculture analyst based in the Nigerian financial capital of Lagos.

“The level of poverty in the various countries makes the consumption of cocoa products a luxury. For example, how much can an average Nigerian set aside for cocoa beverages each month given the economic situation of the country?” she asks. According to the 2005 Human Development Report, produced by the United Nations Development Programme, about 70 percent of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day.

Steps taken by Nigeria’s government in recent years might show the way.

Authorities in this West African country have introduced cocoa as supplement for children, as part of an initiative to provide free lunches at schools. Under a pilot programme that got underway in April 2005, 2.5 million primary school pupils in 12 of the nation’s 36 states are being given at least one meal daily, and a cup of cocoa.

The initiative is aimed at increasing enrolment, so that Nigeria can attain universal primary education. Research by the Ministry of Education has shown that a substantial number of primary school pupils do not eat enough to ensure proper school attendance and performance, while almost half of the children between seven and 15 years are under-weight.

In addition, “The introduction of cocoa drinks in primary schools as part of the school feeding programme of government, if successfully implemented, will inculcate the habit of cocoa beverage consumption in Nigerian youths and eventually adults,” says a 2005 report by government’s Universal Basic Education Committee.

Officials further plan to ensure that within the next few years, 50 percent of cocoa beans harvested in the country is locally processed to produce beverages for domestic consumption.

The Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, based in Ibadan, south-western Nigeria, has also developed varieties of cocoa products – including cocoa cream, liquor, cocoa bread, cakes and biscuits – that could be put on the market. However, the institute is finding it difficult to convince investors to buy the patent rights for most of these products, a critical step towards mass local production.

Warns Falusi, “Without a drastic increase in local processing of cocoa, the campaign for increased domestic consumption will continue to be a mirage.”

Some have speculated about creating a situation in which African producers would exercise the same degree of control over cocoa prices as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has over oil.

But CAN’s Ojo does not believe this is likely. “To say we will operate like OPEC is impossible, because cocoa is an agricultural product – one can not predict if it will do well in any given year. Production is controlled by a lot of things, including weather and pests,” he notes. “But, what the summit has put in place will lift the industry.”

In a communique issued at the end of the Abuja meeting, cocoa producers also agreed to target countries that are not considered traditional consumers of cocoa, such as China and India, in “aggressive international campaigns” intended to spark greater consumption. Furthermore, they plan to promote intra-African trade in cocoa products through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, and regional blocs.

The fate of millions could be affected by these initiatives.

“In Africa, cocoa provides employment for over two million farming households directly, with another five million indirect beneficiaries in the form of input provisions, marketing, warehousing and quality control. A larger figure is employed in other support services,” said Adamu Bello, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development, at the Abuja gathering.

“In all, well over 20 million Africans in the major producing countries rely on the cocoa economy as a source of livelihood.”

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 5 2006 (IPS)

Bishop Kodji, a small fishing and canoe carving island in the Atlantic Ocean off Nigeria’s sprawling commercial hub of Lagos, has become the first village to be electrified under the Lagos State government’s pilot solar energy project..

Before setting up the project, the village, with a population of 5,000, had not known electricity since its existence.

To provide services to the island, which can only be reached by boat, the state government decided to launch the solar project there in May.

Nineteen other remote villages would also benefit from the project before the end of the year, according to state government officials.

”The tropical climate makes solar energy the most viable alternative source of renewable energy in Nigeria. Harnessing the sun’s energy to produce power is an imperative for rural areas where the hope of being connected to the national grid is very remote and extremely expensive,” Kadiri Hamzat, Lagos State Commissioner for Science and Technology, said in Ikeja, capital of Lagos State, in June. He was briefing journalists about the activities of his ministry in the past one year.

Hamzat said the solar energy technology is less expensive than electricity generated by the new Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) that replaced the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), though power supply has gone worse since its establishment. In principle, only the name has changed, NEPA staff still run the new company.

Hamza said: ”It costs about 150 million naira (around 1.2 million dollars) to connect each village to the national grid, while the solar energy project costs only about 10 million naira (around 83,000 dollars) per village.”

A similar project launched in 2002 by the Nigerian government, through the assistance of the Japanese government, has lit 200 rural communities in Imo, Ondo and Jigawa states as well as in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

During a visit to Tokyo, Japan, in September 2001, President Olusegun Obasanjo, requested the Japanese government to help Nigeria with cheap solar energy to improve the country’s electricity supply.

In Nigeria, solar energy is used for variety of applications such as for village electrification, water pumping and irrigating farms.

In Bishop Kodji village, whose main occupation is fishing and boat making, residents now dry fish by solar-powered drier and watch television programmes in the only community hall, while churches and mosques as well as the main street have been lit.

”The project has brought great joy and relief to us. It has brought governance closer to us and we now have access to information more than before when we depended on battery-powered radio. We can now watch television and charge our mobile phones,” Solomon Hennu, the secretary of Kodji Community Development Association, told IPS during a visit to the island late June.

Ezekiel Huehunmey, who is in-charge of the only primary school in Bishop Kodji village, is optimistic that there will be improvement in school enrolment and attendance.

”Most of our children travel on the high seas to attend schools in town because of inadequate classrooms. With electricity and more classrooms, the risk to our children in the event of canoes capsizing will be reduced. We can now enroll more pupils in the school and run two shifts – day and evening,” he said.

But the solar system is not flawless.

Recently the equipment packed up for two days on the island. ”The government officials told us, when they came to repair it, that there was an overloading of the system which triggered it off. They switched it on again but advised residents not to overload it,” Huehunmey said.

The villagers now enjoy electricity from solar most of the time, while their counterparts at Orile, a suburb of Lagos, connected to the PHCN supply, continue to experience frequent power outages.

”Since January this year, we have not had regular power in this area for full day. Now everybody uses a generator,” said Sunday Onyema, a resident of Orile. A generator costs about 66 dollars per unit.

But the generators also come with a price: fire. Onyema, a shop owner, told IPS that one of the occupants burned one-storey building, after leaving a portable generator set on late in the night leading to a fire that razed the whole building mid June. Ilebrick, a poor suburb of Lagos, was also affected by a mid-night fire July 9, when a tenant in one of the rooms tried to refill a portable generator.

In Nigeria, electricity supply has been erratic for the past 20 years due mainly to the neglect of the energy sector by the military regimes which ruled the country for most part of the 1980s and 1990s. Nigeria began enjoying democracy from 1999 after the second attempt at democratic rule (1979-1983) was truncated by the military which in 1966 organised a coup that toppled the first republic.

Nigeria, the sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world, according to the Vienna-based Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), still depends on imported refined products. Nigeria’s four refineries, with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day, operate below capacity due to aging machinery.

Nigeria consumes 30 million litres of refined petroleum per day, while its four refineries jointly produce about 18 million litres per day, leaving a shortfall of 12 million litres to be imported, according to the Department of Petroleum Resources, the government arm of the oil industry.

More than 60 percent of factories in Nigeria, according to a survey released in May by the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN), depend on generators for their main sources of power supply and this, it says, has increased the cost of manufactured goods which is passed on to the consumer. This has had a negative effect on the competitiveness of local products, MAN said.

Bashir Borodo, the new MAN President, told journalists in Lagos early July that they plan to establish an independent power plant to supply electricity to industry.

”The members’ experience with the nation’s power supply has reached a frustrating level. The worsening electricity situation has led to the near collapse of the country’s manufacturing sector,” Borodo said. The plant is expected to take off next year.

Borodo told IPS: ”Solar system will be too expensive for manufacturing companies to run, so we are not thinking of solar as an option to supply electricity to firms. The independent power plant we plan will be to use the abundant gas in Nigeria to power turbines and generate electricity”.

The Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), set up by government to sell off loss-making public assets, puts economic losses arising from erratic power supply at about one billion dollars annually. Only less than 36 percent of Nigerians have access to electricity.

08051840 ORP006 NNNN

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
UMUCHIANI, NIGERIA, Mar 4 2006 (IPS)

It all started some 30 years ago as development began to creep into this small community following Nigeria’s oil boom of the 1970s.

As more buildings began to spring up, so did indiscriminate excavation of soil for foundation filling and sand for brick making and plastering.

What was seen as a development activity then has since constituted a major ecological problem in parts of eastern Nigeria. Dugout pits, created from soil excavation activities, have produced deep craters and gullies due to perennial erosion from torrential tropical rains.

”Several years ago, this community was more than half a kilometre from the excavation site. Today the excavation activity has reached the backyard of the community and almost half the buildings there have been pulled down by the gully erosion or landslides. Some communities have been deserted because of the erosion,” says Mike Mboye, an environmental analyst in Akwa, capital of Anambra State, eastern Nigeria.

In December 2005, the inhabitants of Umuchiani, one of the villages that make up Ikwulobia community in Anambra state, were woken up at night by a noise only to find some houses at the edge of the village giving way to landslide. They deserted their homes, taking refuge in nearby forest and villages.

By the time they returned to their village the following morning, several houses, a church and some roads were washed away. Their farmlands, palm and cashew trees were not spared either. Though nobody died in the incident, more than 250 families (made up of more than 1,500 persons) were displaced. Today, Umuchiani is almost a deserted village as most of the residents have taken up residence in new settlements away from their ancestral homes and shrines.

More than 1,000 erosion sites exist in eastern Nigeria with Anambra State being the worst hit as a result of the topography and the nature of soil, ecologists say.

”There are more than 700 erosion sites in Anambra state alone. The worst hit sites include Manka, Ikwulobia, Nnewi, Agulu and Ideani (villages). All the gullies are man-made. People excavate soil and with time, the sites become channels for run-off rain waters which dig deeper and wider. Some of the gullies have been there for more than 50 years and new ones are springing up daily,” says Boniface Egboka, a Professor of Hydrogeology, at Anambra State University.

Egboka told IPS: ”The gully erosion in Anambra State is horrible. It is better seen than imagined. The whole place is giving way to gully erosion. The people are suffering. Even before the rainy season which starts in March, the people are afraid of what could befall them.”

To sensitise residents, annual workshops have been held on the need to protect environment, construct embankments around some communities and fill pits with sands. But these measures have not had the desired impact because while government is tackling major gullies, other smaller ones emerge. Excavation continues in new sites daily.

The Anambra state government in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Nigeria Agency, a department of the Federal Ministry of Solid Minerals, recently held a one-day workshop in Awka. The theme of the workshop was ”Gully erosion and landslides in Southeastern Nigeria; Control Measures”.

Participants called for international assistance.

In her address, Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Minerals, Obiageli Ezekwesili said more than 1,000 active erosion spots exist in southeast Nigeria.

Furious about the activities of sand excavators which have aided erosion and gully formation, the minister called for a new legislation that would prescribe harsh punishment ”as a panacea to indiscriminate building habits”. No specific law exists against excavation; excavators pay unspecified sums for removing soil from the land to the landowners.

”We do not have to kill our green belt and desecrate our ecosystem in the name of building as there is the need to protect our children’s future. There is need to re-orientate our people,” Ezekwesili said.

Okey Eneuo, the Anambra State Commissioner for Environment, Forestry and Mineral Resources, called on the federal government in the country’s capital of Abuja to take care of larger erosion sites, the control of which, he said, are beyond the resources of the state government.

On its own, the state government has been able to check on less than 700 active erosion sites in the area. ”Any erosion site that does not cost more than 100 million naira (about 700,000 dollars) to contain, has been taken care of or is being taken care of by the state government. Anything above 100 million Naira is beyond our power financially, that is left to the federal government,” Eneuo told IPS.

The state government needs more than 400 million dollars to control erosion, according to Egboka, who conducted a survey on the subject recently.

According to Eneuo, the state has spent about seven million dollars to control erosions on a number of roads before construction could take place. The roads include Igboukwu, Ezinnisite, Uga and Umunze.

An example of erosion spot left to the federal government is the Umuche site in the south of Anambra state. It’s estimated to cost about 64,000 dollars, an amount, Eneuo said was beyond the scope of the state government. Many families have been displaced by erosion at the site recently.

In December ‘Aguata-Orumba Union’, a non-governmental organisation based in the United States, visited erosion sites in Anambra state.

”We decided to visit the site and donate to the affected persons to let the world know the problems the people of the region are going through in the hands of gully erosion, so that world attention could be paid to the region as much as is being paid to other ecological disaster zones of the world,” said Raphael Obijiofor, leader of the group.

”We want the international community to know that there are serious disasters in this area just as there are Katrina hurricanes (which have devastated New Orleans in the United States) and the rest in other parts of the world. We want the world to pay similar attention to this area as they are paying to the other disasters around the world. Erosion problem in eastern Nigeria is beyond the control of both the state and federal governments and we want the international community to come to our aid,” he told journalists in Awka after the assessment tour of the area in December.

03042030 ORP006 NNNN

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
BIU, Borno State, Jan 1 2006 (IPS)

PROSAB or Promoting Sustainable Agriculture in Borno State is a micro-credit project with a difference in northern Nigeria.

Instead of small loans in cash, the Canadian-funded project distributes loans in kind- agricultural inputs like seeds and fertiliser-to indigent farmers. And they repay the loans with a part of their harvests.

The two-year-old project that is being implemented by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) based in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State in the southwestern Nigeria, has improved food security.

Agricultural productivity and incomes have gone up despite the unfavourable weather, soil fertility conditions and ‘striga’, a parasitic grass that has destroyed farms in Borno State.

Nancy Wakama, a lecturer and farmer, asserts: ”the coming of PROSAB has helped us a lot because they have taught us how to defeat poverty, hunger and disease. I am getting twice what I used to produce.”

Most farms in Borno State grow maize and soybean. More than 2,000 farmers in four local governments received free seeds this year. There are over 30 communities participating in the food security project. The project is proving itself self-sustaining. Farmers are producing enough for themselves and to put back in the IITA’s kitty for distribution to new farmers who join up at the start of the planting season every year.

Lucky Omogui, a research associate explains that ”by the second year we reduce the free bags. By the end of two years we withdraw the loan completely because the farmer is now able to buy without depending on us.”

Everywhere yields have gone up. In Marama village, Ndiherwa Ibrahim said she harvested 26 bags of maize on half a hectare of land this year. Before PROSAB, she was producing between 8 and 10 bags.

Now she is a project leader. ”PROSAB has changed my life,” she says. “They showed me how to make money. I am teaching other farmers too. If PROSAB should leave today, we can sustain the project but I don’t want them to leave. They are like a father and mother to us.”

Joshua Mshellia, who took a seed loan for two years, says the PROSAB credit scheme has succeeded in persuading farmers to grow soybeans that add nutrients to the soil and reduces striga infestation.

”If this method is extended to other sandy areas, it will help increase food production not just in northern Nigeria but in the whole country,” the retired head teacher asserts.

Maisanda Mohammed, the district head of Mirga, where the pilot project was launched, says PROSAB has lifted his people from poverty to riches. “Our people are wealthier than before,” he says.

”We have learnt a lot from them (IITA). My people were very lazy before PROSAB came. I am proud to say that everybody now knows what he is doing,” he adds. . Funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the five-year-project has a budget of 5.4 million dollars.

According to Jan Helsen, the project manager of PROSAB, in Borno State farmers are facing increasing food insecurity because of the erratic rainfall, marginal soil fertility and non- conducive policy environment.

”The goal is to improve food security and reduce environmental degradation; to improve sustainable agriculture through transferring improved technologies and management practices, improve market access, develop a more enabling policy environment and enhance capacity,” Helsen told IPS in the state capital Maiduguri.

The IITA is implementing the PROSAB project with local partners, Borno State Agricultural Development Programme, University of Maiduguri, and a non-governmental group Community Research for Empowerment and Development.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Dec 19 2005 (IPS)

At the end of a year that was meant to solve Nigeria’s chronic electricity problems, an assured power supply is still a distant dream in this oil-rich nation.

The highly inefficient power utility National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was broken down into the Power Holding Company Nigeria Ltd. (PHCN) in April this year. A total of 18 new companies were created for the generation and distribution; and to ensure effective, efficient and stable power.

But the changes have only been cosmetic. Blackouts are widespread across the country’s biggest city here, and the capital, Abuja. And consumers are plagued with inflated bills, which in local parlance are called “crazy bills”. In fact, according to most consumers, things have only got worse.

Corruption is rampant in the new electricity companies – six generating companies, 11 distributors and one transmitting – and little is being done to check it. Some technical staff have even been caught taking bribes from defaulting consumers for turning a blind eye.

However, top officials of the PHCN claim the power reforms have been successful. They say that revenue generation has gone up by 133 percent between 2003 and 2005.

“Nigerians should judge PHCN on the basis of the revenue index, rather than performance or service delivery,” says Joseph Makoju, managing director of PHCN. According to figures released by the organisation, the monthly revenue generation has grown from an average of about 25 million dollars in 2003 to the current 58 million dollars in October 2005.

But critics argue that the only way of looking at the increase in revenue is to match the revenue with a corresponding leap in service orientation and power supply.

“In Iju-Ishaga (a Lagos suburb), where I live, in the last 12 weeks, electricity supply has been a rarity. Daily supply averages three to four hours at the most,” says Sanya Oni, a newspaper columnist. “The bills, however, keep coming,” Oni adds. “These have spiraled, despite the many hours of darkness.”

The story is the same everywhere. Those who can afford to rely on generator sets to keep businesses and establishments running in the West African country.

“If Power Holding Company gives uninterrupted power for two days, then you are lucky. Power failure under PHCN is more than what it used to be under NEPA. Now it is total darkness. This is affecting everybody’s business,” says Mama Bisi, a shop owner at Onike, another Lagos suburb.

An informal market survey by IPS showed that portable generators, that are everywhere in the poor rural settlements, sell for between 830 dollars and 1,000 dollars depending on the capacity. Medium-sized establishments rely on industrial generators which could cost anything from 7,874 dollars to 23,622 dollars.

Trying to get around the acute power shortage, some state governments have resorted to establishing Independent Power Production (IPP) companies to boost electricity production. For instance, the Lagos State government in 1999 set up an IPP project that is presently producing 40 MW. Between 1999 and 2000, the Rivers State government in the Niger Delta region started the Omoku Power Station as part of the IPP Gas to Power project of the state.

The project which uses gas from the nearby AGIP oil well (where gas is still being flared) is expected to generate 400 MW. When completed, it is expected to satisfy the power drought in the entire state, according to Magnus Abbe.

Abbe, who is the Rivers State Commissioner for Information, told IPS in Port Harcourt during a recent tour of projects by members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors: ”The power generated at the Omoku power station would be added to the national grid of the PHCN, which will collect rates from consumers and pay a certain percentage of the amount to the state government under an agreement between the PHCN and the State Government”.

Trans Amadi Power Station, a similar project built by the state government in 2002 is already supplying electricity through the PHCN to the Trans Amadi Industrial Estate in Port Harcourt, the state capital.

Encouraged by the ”gas-to power” electricity project of the Rivers State, the Nigerian government is planning to construct seven such power stations at a cost of 2.5 billion dollars in the other Niger Delta states. The Niger Delta comprises nine oil-producing states and part of Ondo state in western Nigeria.

President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that the plants are part of the government’s strategy to raise the country’s electricity generation capacity from the current low of 3,400 MW to 10,000 MW by 2007. Nigeria’s hydro and thermal power generating stations have an installed capacity of 5,237.6 MW, but due to lack of maintenance and corruption, twin ills of most public service utilities, they are operating below their installed capacity.

“The private sector has a pivotal role to play in meeting the power requirement for the development of the country. A suitable framework is required to be put in place to facilitate the private sector involvement in this highly capital intensive power and gas sector,” the former military general who heads the government, told a business forum in Abuja, late November.

The president also thanked the World Bank for the great interest and commitment it has shown in the gas-to-power project, especially for providing the necessary transparency checks on the processes of the project.

According to a new power generation expansion plan programme released early this month and made available to IPS, electricity generation by PHCN is projected to hit 15,853 MW by 2010.

PHCN, according to the document, plans to achieve the new generation output by building up its capacity steadily over the next five years, through the total resuscitation of all existing power stations, and contributions from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).

”We hope to achieve this based on a strong conviction that all our plants, currently undergoing repairs, will be brought on stream by 2010. We are also very confident that by then, all the IPPs, ongoing Federal Government power projects, the proposed Niger Delta power stations and the proposed Joint Venture Independent Power Projects (JVIPPs) with oil and gas firms and other IPPs will come on stream,” one official said.

The existing power stations and their installed capacities are: Egbin Thermal Station, Lagos (1,320 MW); Afam Thermal, Rivers State (969 MW); Sapele Thermal, Delta State (1,020 MW); Ijora Thermal plant, Lagos (40 MW); Kainji Hydro Station, Niger State (760 MW); Jebba Hydro Station, Niger State (578.4 MW) and Shiroro Hydro, Niger State (600 MW).

Existing IPPs, according to the projections, are expected to contribute 750 MW by 2010 while the proposed JVIPPs and other IPPs are expected to generate 2,790 MW and 1,365 MW respectively into the national grid.

As a new year arrives, officials are optimistic of changing forever the bleak electricity situation in Nigeria.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Nov 17 2005 (IPS)

The release and re-arrest of members of a Yoruba organisation this week have marked the latest chapter in Nigeria’s bid to contain ethnic unrest in various parts of the country.

Fredrick Fasehun and Gani Adams, leaders of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), were initially jailed with four other members of the group after clashes broke out in the commercial capital of Lagos last month between rival OPC supporters. The National Union of Road Transport Workers was also drawn into the violence, which reportedly claimed up to eight lives – while more than 40 vehicles were burnt.

The OPC is a militant grouping formed in 1997 to represent the Yoruba, which constitute the second-largest tribe in the West African state. Yorubas are concentrated in south-western Nigeria.

On Monday, the detainees appeared to have been let off the hook, after the director of public prosecution for Lagos State advised that they had no case to answer. However, Fasehun and Adams were re-arrested the following day. They face charges of murder and arson.

In another court decision related to ethnic unrest, officials ruled last week that Alhaji Mujahid Dokubu-Asari – leader of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force – should be remanded until Jan. 10 on treason and felony charges. He was arrested early last month after publicly calling for the break up of Nigeria.

The force has taken up arms to demand that a greater share of oil revenues from the southern delta be awarded to local residents, who have grown weary of seeing these profits disappear into the pockets of corrupt politicians. Inhabitants of the delta, which is dominated by the Ijaw ethnic group, also accuse oil multinationals of polluting their environment.

Last year, Dokubu-Asari and Nigerian officials seemed to have attained a certain measure of détente, with the force leader even being invited to the capital, Abuja, for talks with President Olusegun Obasanjo.

He now faces life imprisonment if convicted, a prospect he claims not to be daunted by. “I am prepared to make any sacrifice for my people. The struggle for the emancipation of my people is my life,” Dokubu-Asari said, as he was led from court to a security van.

“We are not Nigerians. What we are saying is that this trial marks the beginning of the freedom of all the nationalities…”

This fighting talk notwithstanding, critics of Dokubu-Asari accuse him of having been a tool of government in the past, by intimidating people into voting for the ruling People’s Democratic Party during elections in 2003.

Dokubu-Asari’s wife, Mujahidat, says he may turn to regional and international courts if he feels that Nigeria’s legal system has denied him justice.

“Locking up our leaders or killing them, or charging them for treasonable felony for their speeches, will not solve the problem on the ground,” she told IPS during an interview in Lagos, Wednesday. “We need to sit down at a round table conference to discuss the problems and find lasting solutions to them.”

Nigeria’s government also faces a headache over ethnic matters in the form of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), and its leader, Ralph Uwazuruike.

Late last month, Uwazuruike and six others were arrested and charged with planning to overthrow the government – also with running an illegal organisation and inciting violence and intimidation.

MASSOB advocates for the secession of a part of south-eastern Nigeria referred to as Biafra, largely peopled by members of the Igbo, the country’s third-largest tribe. This region also attempted to secede in 1967, sparking a three-year civil war in which millions died from starvation caused by an economic blockade.

“The demand for Biafra is borne out of a long period of neglect of the easterners by the federal government,” says MASSOB’s director for information, Comfort Enenike.

While the group has renounced violence, the seven detainees appeared defiant as they left the court where they pleaded “not guilty” to the charges against them – shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom!”, “Biafra or nothing” and “No negotiation!” Their trial has been adjourned to Dec. 6.

This week, women from MASSOB warned that they might march on the presidential villa in Abuja if Nwazuruike was not freed; Enenike also said there would be a re-enactment of the 1929 riot by women in the city of Aba if he remained under arrest. The 1929 uprising took place on the back of concerns about taxation by British colonial rulers.

Festus Keyamo, lawyer for both Dokubu-Asari and Nwazuruike, says that by arresting ethnic leaders, government is addressing the consequences rather the causes of tribal dissent in Nigeria.

“The ethnic militias are not in themselves the cause of unrest and agitations,” he told IPS in Lagos. “The agitations are borne out of frustration, the dissatisfaction with the lopsidedness and injustice of the federation system in Nigeria.”

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Oct 6 2005 (IPS)

A government programme to provide primary school children with free lunches has been launched in Nigeria, to encourage parents to educate their children – and to ensure that pupils learn effectively.

While a campaign to achieve universal primary education was started in 1999, it has become clear that poverty is still resulting in the exclusion of millions of children from the West African country’s education system.

The prospect of free lunches can make sending children to school a more attractive proposition for poor parents. According to Ayalew Abai, country representative in Nigeria for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there is evidence to suggest that free school meals lead to increased attendance – and better performance on the part of pupils.

Research by the education ministry has shown that almost half of children between the ages of seven and 15 are underweight.

“(Poor) nutrition compromises the physical and mental development of the population, particularly the children,” said President Olusegun Obasanjo at the launch of the project in the capital, Abuja, last week.

“(The) specific objectives of the school feeding programme…are to reduce hunger among Nigerian school children, and increase school enrolment and completion rates – particularly among children in rural communities and poor urban neighbourhoods.”

About 2.5 million pupils in 12 of the country’s 36 states will benefit from the programme. At present, just over seven million children are estimated to be out of school, while some 25 million children have been enrolled. Most of those who are being denied an education are girls.

“The school feeding programme will be a complementary initiative to UNICEF’s current education programmes, which focus on both girls’ education and the promotion of child-friendly schools,” says Abai.

A previous attempt at providing free meals at primary schools proved unsuccessful, due to inadequate planning, a lack of resources and corruption.

The programme, launched May 2002 in 20 local government areas of southern Lagos state, was intended to help pupils in over 900 public primary schools – at a cost of about 10 million dollars.

“We have had instances of the earlier programme being abused by teachers who took away the things, and contractors who shortchanged pupils,” said Babs Animashaun, chairman of the National Parents Teachers Association of Nigeria, who fears that history may repeat itself with the latest school feeding scheme.

To avoid the ill effects of graft, he has called for parents to be closely involved in the new initiative.

“In order not to turn the project into a money spinning avenue, we are insisting that accredited representatives of the PTA (parent/teachers’ association) must be involved in whatever they are going to be giving for the project: money, nutritional supplements and the purchase and distribution of food…” Animashaun told IPS in Nigeria’s financial centre of Lagos.

“We believe it will succeed this time around if parents are involved. They will serve as vigilante groups since the welfare of their children will be uppermost in their minds as parents.”

The Berlin-based corruption watchdog, Transparency International, last year rated Nigeria as one of the worst of 146 countries surveyed for its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (only Bangladesh and Haiti fared worse, tying for last place). The index ranks various states according to the levels of graft that are popularly viewed to prevail in these countries.

Pupils have also given the latest feeding initiative the thumbs up.

“It is a good idea, but the president should extend it to other states: not just 12 states,” said nine-year-old Tunji Taiwo, a primary school pupil in Lagos.

If successful, the feeding scheme could assist Nigeria in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of objectives agreed on by world leaders at the Millennium Summit held in New York, in 2000.

The deadline for reaching the MDGs is 2015. The goals include reducing by half the number of people facing extreme hunger and poverty, achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality.

Child mortality is to be cut by two thirds, and maternal mortality by three quarters.

In addition, the MDGs aim to reverse the incidence of AIDS and other diseases which take a severe toll on developing countries, ensure environmental sustainability – and create a global partnership to tackle issues such as unfair trade rules and unsustainable debt.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, May 27 2005 (IPS)

One year after some 900 people were slaughtered in clashes between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo has failed to prosecute those responsible for the cycle of violence, a Human Rights Watch report charges.

The 75-page report, ‘’Revenge in the Name of Religion: The Cycle of Violence in Plateau and Kano States”, provides the first detailed analysis of the incidents and the factors that continue to threaten the stability of central and northern Nigeria.

The report, released Wednesday, provides detailed documentation of two major outbreaks of violence in the town of Yelwa, Plateau State, in February and May 2004, and a reprisal attack in the northern city of Kano in May 2004.

Reacting to the report, Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) spokesman, Mike Okono, says religion is an emotive issue and that there should be ”no victor, no vanquished” when tackling the problem. According to him, the belligerents will eventually come together and reconcile.

‘’Unlike in the southwest (region), where the problem of religion is less noticeable because within a family there are Christians and Muslims, it is different in the north. The incidents in Plateau and Kano were politically motivated by politicians for their selfish interests, when they whipped up religious sentiments to win votes during elections,” Okono told IPS in a telephone interview.

Peter Takirambudde, director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division, blamed the government for the killings in the two states. He claimed that security forces were absent while hundreds of people were being massacred in Yelwa/Shendam in Plateau State. And that instead of protecting those at risk and arresting the perpetrators, police and soldiers, who were later deployed at the scene of the conflict, shot people on sight.

‘’The warning signs were there for a long time,” Takirambudde said. ‘’But the government chose to do nothing until the situation spiralled out of control.”

In a statement on May 12, 2004, the commission, which is an independent body, condemned ‘’the senseless, gruesome and barbaric massacre of hundreds of people in Yelwa/Shendam by a group of lawless tribal militia and their sponsors”. Okono argues that the removal of the state governor and imposing a state of emergency to restore law and order showed that the government was concerned about the violence in Plateau State.

The commission said the Plateau State Government, which has the primary responsibility to ensure the security of lives and properties, proved incapable, while security agents looked the other way during the massacre.

Okono described as outdated the report by the Human Rights Watch.

‘’They (Human Rights Watch) give the impression that nothing is being done internally. They did not even mention the efforts being made by non-governmental organisations and commissions like ours to ensure that peace and stability returned to the affected areas,” he argued.

‘’Foreign organisations, who write about the problems in that part of the country, do not understand that these are people who have lived together for centuries; they share common culture; have common market and eat common food without any distinction except the difference in religion. All that is needed is to reconcile them as they are bound to come together as one after each crisis,” he added.

Okono urged the government to improve the economic conditions of Nigerians in order to reduce religious tensions.

‘’This is one thing the National Human Rights Commission has been preaching and advocating. The international community and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) should help the country improve the economic life of the ordinary people which will help minimise crisis,” he said.

In its report, the Human Rights Watch notes that at the heart of the conflict is the distinction between ‘indigenes’ – people who consider themselves as the original inhabitants of an area – and those whom they view as ‘settlers’. The concept of ‘indigeneship’ has been exploited and used to discriminate those termed as ‘settlers’.

‘’The Nigerian government needs to remove the distinction between ‘indigenes’ and ‘settlers’,” Takirambudde said. ‘’As long as this distinction is given official recognition, the potential for further conflict remains.”

Okono does not believe that distinction between indigenes and settlers is given official recognition by the government but a creation of the political class. ‘’We do not have in the Nigerian constitution indigenes and settlers. It is basically a creation of the political leaders to manipulate the citizens for their benefit,” he explained.

He said the commission had sent a memorandum to the National Assembly to look at the problem of indigenes and settlers. It has also submitted recommendations to the on-going National Political Reform Conference to ensure that indigene or settler do not find their ways into the country’s constitution.

Like Takirambudde, Okono wants those responsible for the violence in the two states to be brought to justice as part of measures to prevent a recurrence of the conflict. ‘’Most of these violence are politically motivated. Therefore, we are insisting that whoever is involved should be taken to court and if found guilty should receive severe punishment as deterrent to others,” he told IPS.

‘’The government needs to do much more to ensure lasting peace in the affected areas,” Takirambudde said. ‘’The authorities need to send a clear message that those responsible for these killings will be arrested and prosecuted. The impunity protecting the perpetrators has only encouraged further violence.”

Plateau State has recorded several incidents of violence in the last four years, starting with the outbreak of violence in the city of Jos in September 2001, in which around 1,000 people were killed in less than a week. Between 2002 and 2003, violence spread to other parts of the state. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 people have died in communal violence in the state since 2001.

In the central region that lies between the mainly Muslim north and largely Christian south, armed Muslims on February 24, 2004 killed more than 75 Christians in the town of Yelwa, at least 48 of them inside a church compound. Then on May 2-3, hundreds of armed Christians surrounded the town from all directions and killed around 700 Muslims. They also abducted scores of women, some of whom were raped. Both attacks were well-organised and, in both instances, the victims were targeted on the basis of their religion.

A week later, Muslims in the northern city of Kano retaliated by attacking Christian residents of the town, killing more than 200. In addition, police and soldiers deployed to restore order in Kano were alleged to have carried out dozens of extrajudicial killings themselves.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Feb 21 2005 (IPS)

More than a decade after its last headcount, Nigeria is preparing to conduct the country’s fifth census this year. However, religion and ethnicity – long the bane of national life – appear set to bedevil the process.

The National Council of State, a body which includes the president, the 36 state governors and former heads of state, decided last month that the form for the 2005 census would not include questions about the religion or ethnic group of persons surveyed.

This came after Ahmed Makarfi, governor of Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, threatened to mount a boycott of the census if these issues were dealt with in the questionnaire. During an exercise conducted late last year by the National Population Commission (NPC) to inform people about the census, Makarfi argued that the eventual publication of statistics on religion and ethnicity could deepen existing divisions along these lines – and even lead to social unrest.

NPC Chairman Samaila Makama appeared convinced by this argument, noting: "Since each religious and ethnic group would prefer numerical superiority over the other, it might be safer to ignore religion and ethnicity since there would be the temptation by each group to explore ways to have an edge over the other."

Northern Nigeria is mostly Muslim, while the south has a concentration of Christians and animists. It is estimated that Muslims make up about 50 percent of the country’s population, and Christians 40 percent. The remaining 10 per cent of Nigerians follow other religions.

In 2000, several northern states were wracked by clashes between Muslims and Christians following the introduction of Islamic law – sharia – in these territories.

The country’s religious divide has been aggravated by tribal differences (Nigeria has about 250 ethnic groups).

One of the bitterest ethnic disputes saw members of the third-largest tribe in Nigeria, the Ibo, make an unsuccessful attempt in 1967 to secede. Now certain Ibos, who believe their tribe has been marginalized by government, appear to view the census as a way of gathering statistics that will back their claim to a larger share of Nigeria’s resources.

Accordingly, governors from south-eastern states where many Ibos reside are demanding that ethnic and religious persuasions be covered by the census. And, they have threatened their own boycott of the headcount if it fails to deal with these matters.

Yet another threat of boycott has come from Kaduna-based officials of the Christian Association of Nigeria, who also want the census to take account of religion and ethnicity. The United Nations recommends that census forms include questions on these issues.

Nigeria’s last census, held in 1991, was also the subject of controversy, sparking over a hundred law suits from parties that contested the results.

The number of parliamentary representatives which a region can nominate, and the amount of money it receives from central government are largely determined by the population of that region. As a result, many communities are alleged to have inflated their census figures during previous headcounts, prompting legal challenges by groups which felt disadvantaged by census outcomes.

"The problem with Nigeria is that we have tended to place more premium on using census data for revenue allocation than on planning for sustainable development," says Makama.

Those organising the 2005 census hope to break this trend by using the survey not only to count people, but also dwellings in Nigeria. In addition, the census will survey whether people have access to services such as piped water, electricity and telephone communication.

At present, census officials are dividing the country into what are termed "enumeration areas", zones small enough to be traversed by census takers when the count is held in the final months of this year. It is estimated that the census will take three to four days to complete.

The exercise is expected to cost about 265 million dollars.

Britain’s Department for International Development is providing satellite imaging to assist officials with deciding on the perimeters of the enumeration areas, at a cost of almost 60,000 dollars.

The European Union is supporting the headcount with funding of about 15 million dollars, which the United Nations Population Fund and the United States Agency for International Development have also pledged assistance with the census.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jan 23 2005 (IPS)

Tonnes of garbage dot market places, bus stops and bridges, overwhelming efforts to clean up Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos.

The residents of this sprawling city of over 10 million people dump refuse indiscriminately. Some defecate and urinate in open places.

Last year alone, the Lagos state government spent more than 10 million dollars on clearing and disposing of refuse, and demolishing of illegal structures. Despite its efforts, the city still remains one of the dirtiest in the country.

Lagos was regarded as the dirtiest capital in the world in the seventies, but the trend changed when military ruler Muhammadu Buhari introduced a compulsory exercise to clean up the city in the late 1980s, which lasted till the early 1990s. With the exercise, Lagos attained an enviable position of one of the cleanest cities.

The exercise was abolished by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, while Nigerians were just imbibing the virtue of cleaning their environment. Obasanjo believed the exercise should be voluntary. As a result, Lagos has now reverted to its old appellation of the dirtiest city.

In Oct. 2003 a worried Lagos state government launched a ‘’Clean Up Lagos’’ campaign, initiated by the city’s new Commissioner for Environment, Tunji Bello, an environmental journalist.

Volunteers were organised to enforce discipline. Environmental watchdogs were empowered to arrest offenders or report any acts of indiscipline with particular emphasis on indiscriminate dumping of refuse and blockage of drainage.

A number of offenders were arrested at the initial stages of the exercise and fined sums ranging from about nine dollars to 48 dollars each. Although local officials insist achievements have been made since the programme was set up in Oct. 2003, piles of refuse are still noticeable on major streets of the metropolis.

This has led to the emergence of unknown persons who have begun a subtle campaign to scare persons with the habit of dumping refuse in unauthorised places and polluting street corners with urine and feaces. The campaign seems to be working faster than government’s enlightenment campaigns, as observed by IPS during a tour of some parts of the city.

‘’If you dump refuse here, God will punish you’’ reads an inscription in black paint, on the wall of a dump site along the Oke-Afa canal in Lagos. This site is located about 50 metres from the graveyard where more than 1,000 persons, including women and children, were buried. These people perished in the brackish waters of the canal, while fleeing from ammunition explosions at the Ikeja military cantonment in Jan. 2002.

Another inscription, on an overhead bridge at Akowonjo suburb, across the Lagos-Abeokuta highway, says: ‘’Did you go to secondary school? Then do not throw pure water (sachet water) nylon on the roads anyhow. Do not dump refuse under this bridge unless you want to die.’’

At Onike, another suburb of Lagos, IPS noticed an inscription in Yoruba, a language spoken in southwest Nigeria, on the fence of a prestigious girls’ school, Queen’s college: ‘’To sihin, babalawo fe lo ito’’ (urinate here, a herbalist wants to use your urine for rituals).

‘’This spot used to be a sort of convenience for people because it is a bus stop. But since this inscription appeared on this wall, urine disappeared. You can still see the dark colouration of the effect of urine but nobody uses the place anymore,’’ said Babatunde Okeowo, a government official.

Okeowo told IPS: ‘’People are scared. I am scared myself. I can not do it here. I would rather get home before urinating even if I am very pressed. You may think that it is just a sort of campaign to stop people from using the place but it could be true some herbalist can use people’s urine for money-making rituals. Anything can happen in Nigeria’’.

A garbage collector, who identified himself only as Charles, pulled his refuse-truck pusher right to the centre of the dump before emptying it. Previously, he would probably have emptied the content outside the fence.

‘’I am a Christian. I don’t want God to punish me. I think it is not right to cause environmental officials more work,’’ said Charles.

‘’I make a living from waste collection and disposal. I will not want to incur any curse on myself,’’ he said. Charles makes between 23 dollars and 38 dollars a day from collecting refuse from residential buildings and disposing them at the dump.

Although the campaigners, who use unorthodox methods, are unknown, law abiding residents and local officials are happy with their intervention, which they agree could correct the bad habits.

‘’Whoever is doing this (inscription) is doing a good job. It has helped in its own way to stop refuse in some areas. They should come out openly, so that government and non-governmental organisations can sponsor their campaigns,’’ said Julius Enehikuere, an environmental reporter.

Supporting the campaign, Segun Thorpe, spokesperson for the Lagos State Ministry of Environment said: ‘’Any action by any individual or group of persons to help curb indiscriminate dumping of refuse is welcome. These people, though they are unknown, are partners in progress with the state government. It will make an impact in efforts to rid the state of filth. We welcome it’’.

He added: ‘’Private participation in refuse collection and disposal offers a lasting solution to the filthy environment of Lagos.’’

The state ministry of environment plans to build more dump sites and sign agreements with private firms to help turn waste to wealth. It also seeks to embark on more vigorous enlightenment programme on proper waste disposal and clean environment, Thorpe said.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 18 2004 (IPS)

Foundiku Ousman started his arts business with three friends, after raising a small capital of about 700 dollars, at Founmban in western Cameroon, in 1997. Today he is regarded as a wealthy man in a trade where only hard work opens the door to success.

Ousman runs a shop in South Africa’s commercial hub of Johannesburg. He also maintains the store at Founmban, and travels around Africa to collect antiques for sale in South Africa.

‘’Arts is a very difficult business anywhere in the world. In South Africa, only a hard-working man can live well. A lazy man suffers if he does not work hard,’’ he says.

When IPS visited him, the 32-year-old Cameroonian, born in the Republic of Congo, was standing in front of a six-by-ten-feet stall wooing tourists. The stall, located inside the African Craft Market, near Johannesburg’s popular Rosebank town, was opened in 1999.

Ousman hopes a tourist would pop in and pick an item. He has recorded no sales in a week because of hard times. But he has to pay his rent of about 260 dollars a month.

‘’Come in sir. I have crafts from West Africa, Central Africa and South Africa,’’ he says. If he was disappointed when this reporter introduced himself as a journalist wanting an interview with him, he did not show it.

All the other craft and arts dealers in the complex are having a tough time due to low business since 2000 when the South African currency, the rand, began a steady climb against the dollar. Four years ago a dollar was fetching 13 rands, now it only brings between 5.6 and six rands.

‘’With a very strong rand forcing down the dollar, tourists are reluctant to spend their money on crafts. For us craft dealers, it ought to be a time for good business but there are no buyers,’’ Osman says.

On a lucky day, Ousman could sell one piece of arts work for between 862 and 1,731 dollars.

Ousman, like other antique collectors, also faces difficulties in buying and exporting arts work banned in Africa.

Nigeria, for example, has since 2001 intensified efforts to check the illegal smuggling of artefacts to foreign countries. It has introduced severe penalties including prison terms for anyone caught attempting to export antiquities without a permit issued by the country’s National Council of Museum and Monuments.

The commission has succeeded in retrieving 44 artefacts removed from Nigeria more than a century ago. The items, worth millions of dollars, were handed to the National Council of Museum and Monuments in Lagos by Jean David, director of Zurich Galarie Walu, last year.

But Ousman has found a way round the ban. He only needs a photograph of such a piece and his workers in Cameroon would replicate it.

‘’In Nigeria, for example, it is difficult to take terracotta and Yoruba pieces out of the country. But I ask the artists to make a replica,’’ he says.

His stall is fully stocked with arts work and antiques from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Congo and South Africa.

In the stall are bright and beautifully coloured beaded Ndebele arts from South Africa, made from plastics. Other beads on display, from Nigeria and Congo, are glassy. Also on display are terracotta from northern Nigeria, Bamoun spears as well as traditional drums from Cote d’Ivoire.

According to Ousman, 75 percent of the items in his stall are replicas of arts from other countries, carved at Founmban. Ousman is Bamoun, one of the largest ethnic groups in Cameroon. The Bamoun live on arts and crafts. Most of them know how to chip arts and Ousman grew up with it, although, he does not carve, he paints carved items to make them more attractive.

Ousman and his tribesmen need not go to school to learn arts. In fact, most of them never went to school. Arts is passed on from generation to generation. Carving has become their source of livelihood apart from agriculture.

‘’Most of our tribesmen are very clever in arts and any arts work they see just once, they can replicate. Arts comes from their mind. When they wake up, any concept of art that comes to their mind they do it,’’ he explains.

The ingenuity of the Bamoun craftsmen is seen on a replica of an ancient arts work from Southern Nigeria, which Ousman shows off proudly. The piece is the bust of a man with four horns shooting out of the head. The horns represent the limbs and are covered with animal skin.

‘’Five centuries ago, in Southern Nigeria a powerful chief skinned people alive and use the skin to build this kind of fetish object which he kept in his palace for protection. But now, we use animal leather which is not so authentic as that one in Nigeria, but which reminds people of history,’’ Ousman explains.

Ousman also faces the problem of fraudsters. Some middlemen, who assist him in buying antiques from the villages in the hinterlands, have disappeared with his money which is usually paid up front. He also faces challenges from civil wars rocking some African countries.

The conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire and Congo, for example, have prevented him from traveling to those countries for security reasons.

Despite the current setbacks, Ousman says he is hopeful of the future. He says he is working hard to set up large galleries on African crafts and antiques in South Africa and Cameroon. ‘’I am happy with the progress and growth of my business. I am hoping for a brighter future,’’ he says.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Sep 24 2004 (IPS)

Disused pits dug by illegal gold miners dot the expanse of land which once served as farmland. Before the gold rush, the villagers in this sprawling farming community, called Igun, used to produce cash crops like cocoa, coffee and cola nuts.

When IPS visited the village in western Nigeria, the illegal gold panners had already left and had moved on to other locations in search of the precious gem.

‘’As you can see, the pits have been deserted after the miners had finished collecting the gold here. They have moved further to new areas leaving the lucrative farming business in the village in shambles,’’ says Kola Olabisi, acting as IPS guide.

According to Olabisi, the illegal miners are mostly foreigners from neighbouring Niger and Chad.

Pointing to some abandoned rusty excavation equipment left behind by the state-owned Nigerian Gold Mining Company (NGMC), a subsidiary of the Nigerian Mining Corporation, Olabisi explained: ‘’The activities of illegal miners became more pronounced in the last seven years when NGMC, folded up and abandoned its mining activities here. With its exit, the illegal miners took over and unleashed havoc on any land suspected to contain gold deposit.’’

For more than 12 years of its operation at the mines near Igun, the company dug up trenches which now form pools of undrinkable brackish water that constitute health hazards to both villagers and livestock.

The illegal miners followed in the company’s footsteps digging up trenches in search of gold, creating more pits.

While the illegal gold diggers make thousands of dollars through their business, the locals get peanuts. And they are continuously faced with the dangers of environmental degradation to their farmlands and other hazards resulting from the open pits.

‘’We are suffering. The illegal miners have dug up our farms, posing dangers to our lives. Our crops have been destroyed because of their activities. Whenever we tried to question them, they showed us papers (mining rights) which they claimed were obtained from government,’’ complains Olu Ibikunle, a farmer.

‘’Instead of being a blessing, the discovery of gold has become a curse to us. We no longer have enough good farming land, while our fresh waters are now polluted,’’ he says.

As a result, women and children now walk long distances in search of clean drinking water.

Part of the problem seems to be rooted in poverty. IPS has learnt that the illegal miners pay – or bribe – some unsuspecting poor farmers to allow them prospect for the gem on their land. A lucky miner, who hits some good quantity of gold, could become an instant Naira millionaire as an ounce of gold fetches as much as 40,000 naira (about 400 dollars) in the market.

Femi Adefila, a senior government official in Oshogbo, the capital of Osun State, where Igun is located, told IPS: ‘’Because of the large deposit of gold in the area, the illegal miners have seized the opportunity to perform their illegal acts.’’

‘’We recently arrested three illegal miners. They told us they work for a businessman. But when we tried to get to the businessman, he bolted. The three men have been charged for economic sabotage,’’ Adefila said. Each of the men risks five years jail term on conviction.

Adamu Hassan, one of the apprehended men, said: ‘’I work for a big man. Our bosses are businessmen from both Nigeria and abroad. Most of us do this as a means of survival. We sometimes melt the gold and sell to goldsmiths in Oshogbo,’’ he said.

So far, local officials are powerless to stop the illegal miners. Osun State officials say mineral resources fall under the federal government in the capital Abuja, making it impossible for Nigeria’s 36 states to rein in the miners.

‘’We are helpless. It is a shame that some of those who are stealing our resources through illegal mining and constituting a nuisance to the people are not even Nigerians. But we can hardly do anything because of the policy of government which places natural resources in the exclusive list of the federal government,’’ complains one government official.

Section one and 221 of decree 34 of 1999 vested the ownership and control of all minerals, including the power to issue licenses, collect rents, fees, and royalties, in the federal government. This power is exercised through the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, established to boost non-oil exports.

Since the creation of the ministry in 1995, officials say investors – both local and foreign – have shown interest in Nigeria’s gold deposits found almost throughout the Western and North-western regions.

Two weeks ago, Kaduna State Governor, Ahmed Makarfi, while receiving the National Steel Raw Materials Exploration Agency officials, expressed concern over the activities of illegal miners in his state. He urged the agency to assist the government in checking the menace.

There have also been reports of physical attacks on persons who tried to obstruct the activities of illegal miners. About two years ago, a traditional ruler in Osun state was attacked in his palace by hoodlums for daring to obstruct their activities.

In the tantalite-rich Kogi state, central Nigeria, investors were driven out of some fields by illegal miners who felt threatened.

Similar incidents of harassments, or ejection of investors, have also been reported in the northern states of Plateau, Nasarawa and Jigawa. In 2001, the Mining Association of Nigeria, led by Dabo Zang, urged the Nigerian government to do something about the illegal miners.

While government is losing revenue, and environments are being polluted, the illegal miners are smiling all the way to the bank. Odion Ugbesia, Minister of Solid Minerals Development, said last week that exploitation of tantalite alone in a village in Kwara state, central Nigeria, was fetching the miners an average of six million Naira (about 60,000 dollars) a week.

Ugbesia announced that government plans to put in place programmes for accelerated and orderly exploration and exploitation of the vast solid minerals to curtail the activities of illegal miners. His permanent secretary, Aboki Zhawa, said last that informal mining activities would be formalised to make them economically viable and environmentally friendly.

‘’Although the informal miners provide massive self-employment especially in the rural areas, their activities constituted environmental degradation due to abandoned pits, polluted rivers, high exposure of radio-active and hazardous minerals. Informal mining is an impediment to the orderly development of solid minerals sector in the country,’’ Zhawa said.

He said government would formalise mining by reviewing the current legislation with emphasis on consultation and interactive discussion with mining communities on mutual preservation of interests.

‘’Formalising the sector would yield revenue to government and provide sustainable self-employment for at least 500,000 people. Other benefits included minimising environmental degradation and social and health problems such as child labour,’’ he said.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 17 2004 (IPS)

It has been dubbed the "paradox of plenty". Although Nigeria is the sixth-largest oil producer in the world, fuel shortages have become a common feature of life in the West African country over the past two decades.

Corruption in the oil sector is typically blamed for these shortages. In particular, analysts point to mismanagement of the country’s four refineries, run by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The refineries, built over a period of almost 25 years (from 1965 to 1989) have a combined capacity for processing 445,000 barrels of oil a day, to produce two-thirds of the fuel needed by Nigeria daily (20 million litres of fuel). However, the facilities work below capacity for most of the time, and have even been shut down on occasion because they are not properly maintained.

An overhaul of the refineries – something analysts refer to as "turn around maintenance" (TAM) – should be done every two years. However, some of the facilities have operated for more than five years at a stretch without TAM.

"During military rule, bogus contracts were given for turn around maintenance…which were not properly supervised. With the usual heavy kickbacks received by government functionaries, nobody questioned contractors who did not fulfill their obligations," says Frank Kokori, former secretary-general of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers, and now a petroleum sector consultant in Nigeria’s economic hub, Lagos.

"That was the beginning of the rot of the refineries," he told IPS.

Ironically, Nigeria is now obliged to import refined fuel from other countries, such as Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

"I have seen older refineries around the world. I have seen the one in Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana, (which are) working very efficiently," says Kokori. "Nigerian refineries were built with an enormous amount of money, but it is the maintenance culture that has resulted in most of the problems."

When Nigeria reverted to civilian rule in 1999, the new government tried to tackle the problems that have dogged the four refineries. But, difficulties remain.

"We thought that in this new dispensation under democracy there will be checks and balances, and that the National Assembly committees concerned should be able to call the government to order – to question why so much is spent without results," Kokori says. "(But) these were not there, so the old system of making cheap money through importation continues."

Efforts to find out what the Committee on Petroleum Resources of the House of Representatives in Abuja had done to investigate the situation at Nigeria’s refineries were fruitless.

Ishola Williams, a retired general and member of the Nigerian chapter of Transparency International, the Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, believes that instances of alleged graft in the oil sector would be probed with greater efficiency if more resources were devoted to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

This body was set up in June 2000 to investigate persons believed to be involved in corrupt practices. At present, it works with the police when conducting inquiries.

"The ICPC should have their own investigators," says Williams, adding that government should also set up special tribunals to hear corruption cases. At present, these cases are dealt with by regular courts, where proceedings are often delayed.

"The commission could recoup money spent investigating and prosecuting arrested culprits from stolen money recovered from such people, by retaining a percentage of the amount while the balance is paid into government coffers," noted Williams.

The notion of privatizing the refineries has also been floated as another way of ensuring that these facilities begin operating more efficiently.

Williams – even Kokori, a former labour leader – believe this would go a long way to resolving maintenance problems at the refineries.

But, environmentalist Austin Monday fears the same coterie of officials who profited from corruption in other parts of the oil sector could somehow reap benefits from a privatization programme.

"We are worried that the refineries will be hijacked by the same top government officials who have the money stolen from public coffers. It is a shame that an oil-producing nation like ours is in this mess because of corruption," he said.

In addition, government has also attempted to increase fuel availability by deregulating the import and sale of refined products earlier this year. Previously, this was the monopoly of the NNPC.

But, although availability has increased, so have prices – sparking protests by workers.

In June, the fuel price rose to about 40 cents a litre, leading to a three-day strike. Any increase in the price of fuel has serious implications for a country where, according to the 2004 Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme, up to 70 percent of people live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

Femi Fanikayode, presidential assistant on public affairs, rejects the view that little has improved in the petroleum sector since President Olusegun Obasanjo came to power five years ago.

"Nigerians should not because of the problems they are experiencing presently ask government to go back to the past, when we had fuel scarcity because of a monopoly," he said. "It will take time for us to get used to liberalization, but we must give it a chance."

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Aug 8 2004 (IPS)

The fight for human rights in Nigeria has received ample coverage, as has that for fairer distribution of oil revenues – and the battle to curb endemic corruption. But, Nigerian women have another, and often more pressing fight on their hands – for abortion rights.

It’s a struggle that Toyin Aje knows something about. When she fell pregnant with a child that her boyfriend was not prepared to bring up, they concluded that abortion was the best way of dealing with the situation. The state disagreed.

In Nigeria, abortion is only permitted if the procedure is needed to save the life of a woman. Abortion under other circumstances is punishable with up to seven years imprisonment for the woman concerned, while the doctor who performs the procedure can spend 14 years in jail.

As Toyin was unable to get an abortion in a public hospital, the couple sought the help of someone who operated a pharmacy in the capital, Abuja – but who was neither a doctor nor a qualified pharmacist. Toyin was given drugs to induce abortion in her fifth month of pregnancy.

While the foetus died, it was not flushed from the womb. Toyin began experiencing severe pain, and was ultimately hospitalized in a facility near her village of Ogori, some 200 kilometres south of Abuja. Although doctors there managed to save her life, she was told that she would not be able to have more children.

Gloria Oguntola, who lived in the commercial centre of Lagos, was not that fortunate. Her illegal abortion caused her to bleed to death.

“We do not know who to hold responsible because she could not tell us before she died. I leave everything to God,” Gloria’s father, John Oguntola, told IPS.

The United Nations Population Policy Data Bank estimates that only 40 per cent of abortions in Nigeria are performed by doctors. The complications resulting from botched abortions have made the procedure one of the leading causes of maternal death in the country.

Now Ipas, a United States-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works for women’s health and and reproductive rights, is calling for Nigeria’s abortion laws to be reviewed.

“What we are saying about reforming the abortion law is we should include rape and incest in the law, which presently allows abortion only to save a woman’s life. The decision to abort should also be the wish of the woman,” Ipas country director for Nigeria, Ejike Oji, told IPS.

A 2004 report by Ipas says about 46 million women around the world seek abortions each year, more than half of them resorting to untrained providers who work in unsanitary conditions. A quarter of these unsafe abortions occur in Africa.

Boniface Oye-Adeniran, president of the Confederation of African Medical Associations and Societies, also believes it is essential to alter Nigeria’s abortion laws.

“For us to reduce the carnage of our women through unsafe abortion, the law has to regulate abortion services, determine who performs it and where it can be performed. If abortion services are available in public hospitals, quacks will be discouraged,” says Oye-Adeniran, who is also an obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.

In 2000, the UN set reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015 as one of its Millennium Development Goals. The eight goals focus on – amongst other things – improving health and education, and reducing poverty around the world.

However, religious leaders in Nigeria have argued against legalising abortion, saying life is sacrosanct from the moment of conception.

Oye-Adeniran, who formed part of a team of Nigerian and American researchers who undertook a survey of abortions in Nigeria between 1996 and 1997, said the study showed that about 366,000 unsafe abortions were performed in the country annually.

The researchers were sponsored by the United States-based Alan Guttmacher Institute – which investigates sexual and reproductive health issues – and the Nigerian Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy, an NGO.

They also found that even though abortions are mostly outlawed in Nigeria, the rate of abortion in the country was higher than that of many Western European states. In addition, the incidence of abortion in Nigeria was comparable to that of the United States, where abortion is legal.

The researchers concluded that while improved access to contraception would reduce unplanned pregnancies and hence abortions, greater access to safe abortion was needed to protect the health of Nigerian women.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jul 23 2004 (IPS)

The debate around a journalism school in Lagos, which has withdrawn the admission letter of a new student, after learning that he is living with HIV, doesn’t seem to go away.

Adegboye Ibikunle’s dismissal by the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) has sparked protests by civil societies who have demanded that the college takes him back immediately.

‘’The protest becomes necessary as the NIJ Provost has refused to listen to reason to re-admit Ibikunle,’’ says Oba Oladapo, programme co-ordinator of the Positive Live Association of Nigeria, an association of which Ibikunle is member.

Ebenezer Durojaiye, of the Centre for Rights to Health, a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation, said: ‘’The expulsion of Adegboye Ibikunle by the authorities of NIJ simply because of his HIV status constitutes acts of unfair discrimination, inhuman and degrading treatment forbidden under the constitution of Nigeria. We demand with immediate effect, a reversal of this decision and a re-instatement of Adegboye into the institution’’.

The centre has threatened to take legal action if the decision to expel Ibikunle is not reversed.

‘’We are worried because we thought Nigeria has already passed that stage where anyone would be discriminated against for disclosing his HIV status. Such discrimination will make others who live with the virus not to disclose their status, and that would compound the crisis,’’ Shina Loremikan, Director of Programmes, Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), told IPS.

The singling out of Ibikunle does not help the fight against HIV/AIDS, Loremikan said. ‘’It is even worse that a school of journalism which one expects to know better and should have access to information on HIV/AIDS matter, is the one discriminating against a student for disclosing his status,’’ he added.

Kingsley Obon-Egbulem of Journalists Against AIDS, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), described the withdrawal of Ibikunle’s admission as an expression of ignorance.

‘’The matter was badly handled by the NIJ, which has also refused to cooperate with us. The NGOs, especially the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, who are just back from Bangkok (Thailand) where they attended AIDS conference, will want to ensure that this does not become a bad precedent. In fact, this is the third time that stigmatisation has taken place in Nigeria. The first two cases were not properly addressed but this one is going to be different,’’ he said.

According to him, Ibikunle ”would have been an asset to the NIJ especially in programmes organised by the school to fight the scourge.’’

Some 3.8 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria where about one million children are orphaned by the disease, according to the latest Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report. However, health officials believe the figures could be higher as many people do not go for voluntary HIV tests.

Ibikunle’s problem began after he applied to the Nigerian Institute of Journalism for admission. He received a letter of offer of admission as a student and immediately paid the required fees of about 500 dollars.

As is the tradition, the new students, including Ibikunle, were welcomed by the Provost of the school, Elizabeth Ikem, who, in her address stressed the need for punctuality and strict adherence to the institution’s time table. She warned that students found guilty of frequent absence, would be sent home.

But Ibikunle, who collects his life-prolonging anti-retroviral treatment from Ibadan, some 120 km northwest of Lagos, knows he had to be absent once every month. He informed the school authorities about it.

It was a big mistake. When he tried to attend lectures after completing all the necessary registrations, he was handed a letter withdrawing his earlier admission and a cheque for the amount he had paid on admission.

The letter, according to him, said the Academic Board of the institution had sat on his case and had decided to withdraw the earlier offer of admission.

‘’I told the provost that I will be absent from school once every month, so that I can go to University College Ibadan to collect my anti-retroviral drugs because I am HIV-positive. She told me I should put it in writing. I went to Ibadan and collected a letter to that effect,’’ says Ibikunle, who is seeking justice.

‘’When I came back to start lectures, she gave me the sour and bitter news. I pleaded with her but she gave me the option of withdrawing by myself. I said I cannot. Then she gave me the second option that I should defer my admission until the National Board for Technical Education is off her back,’’ he says.

‘’I broke down in tears when (the provost) asked me to sign a copy of the letter. This is unfair. Just because I came out to say the truth that I am HIV positive, they are victimising me,’’ says Ibikunle.

‘’I am sad because in this internet age when everybody has access to information, an institution that is supposed to be training people that will disseminate information to the public is behaving this way. This is a school that should cure the society of misinformation about HIV and AIDS, rather, it is promoting stigmatisation against people living with HIV. If people are honest enough to declare their health status, we should encourage them,’’ he argues.

The provost said the matter was being handled by the board of directors of the institution.

However, a member of the board of directors, who does not want his name published, said Ibikunle was not asked to withdraw because he was HIV-positive. He claimed Ibikunle would not be able to attend classes for the required number of days set by the authority for students to qualify, since he has to travel every month.

Obon-Egbulem disagreed. He believes Ibikunle is not different from other students who have disability but are usually given special concessions.

‘’Some students have sickle-cell anemia, some are blind but they are usually given concessions by their schools. The NIJ board cannot tell me that because they have set a standard they cannot allow Ibikunle to go once a month to Ibadan for his medication. If they say they are not stigmatising him, then he should be given some concessions,’’ he argued.

Discrimination against people living with HIV has for long been a contentious issue in Nigeria. Lobby groups like the Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS (NEPLWA), Nigeria AIDS Alliance and Youth Against AIDS claim stigmatisation exists in the work place, hospitals, health insurance companies and educational institutions.

Campaigners have called for a bill to check against discrimination or stigmatisation of People Living with HIV.

‘’Under such a bill, no person shall be quarantined, refused lawful entry or deported from the country on the grounds of his or her HIV status. Educational institutions will not be allowed to deny admission, expel, discipline, segregate or bar participation in any event or activity and neither cancel benefits or services to a person on the grounds of he or she being HIV positive,’’ says Pat Matemilola of the NEPLWA.

Several bills on HIV/AIDS are currently in the National Assembly awaiting passage, according to Babatunde Osotimehin, chair of the state-run National Action Committee on AIDS.

In attempts to demystify the epidemic, Family Health International, Nigeria chapter, says: ‘’AIDS is not a moral issue. It is a public health as well as developmental problem. People living with HIV and AIDS have the same fundamental human rights as any person.’’

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jun 23 2004 (IPS)

It is 08.00 in Iba Town – a suburb of Nigeria’s southern economic hub, Lagos – and people have defied heavy rains to start lining up outside a mobile clinic that treats eye disorders. The queue will ultimately include hundreds of peasant farmers, fishermen, traders, school children and senior citizens.

Seven tents have been set up in the sprawling court yard of a traditional leader’s residence. The first serves as a reception area where patients are registered, while the other six house facilities to test sight, diagnose diabetes (a possible cause of blindness), distribute spectacles and the like. Those patients with cataracts or other conditions requiring surgery will receive free operations.

“Those with glaucoma or cataracts (that need) surgery are tested for HIV/AIDS before they are referred to the ultra-modern clinic at the Ikeja General Hospital. We do the tests – including the HIV test – here, free,” said an official from the Lagos State Blindness Prevention Programme.

“We believe that if they discover they are HIV positive, they will not come for the surgery. Here we do not tell them their status but we send them and their files to the surgeons at the hospital.”

Efforts to prevent the needless onset of blindness amongst Lagos residents first started in 2000, when screenings were done in local government offices. Many people found it difficult to reach these offices, however, and it was clear that a more innovative approach was needed.

As a result, mobile clinics were introduced.

“At the beginning of this year, the strategy was improved upon because we want to get to the communities through the Obas. These are the community leaders who are able to mobilise the people at the grassroots level, and so we are able to touch the lives of our citizenry which cannot afford the cost of surgery in private hospitals,” Bridget Erikitola, Director of the Blindness Prevention Programme, told IPS. (“Oba” is the Yoruba word for traditional ruler. Yoruba is spoken in the south-west of the country.)

Eye surgery in Nigeria costs between 500 and 1,000 dollars, while a pair of glasses can cost as much as 70 dollars – the consultation with an optometrist not included. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2003 Human Development Report, up to 70 percent of Nigerians live below the poverty line of a dollar a day.

The residences of traditional rulers were chosen as venues for the clinics, because each community has such an authority.

“The Oba’s palace is within their neighbourhood, the service is free and all drugs, glasses and surgery are free,” says Erikitola, who cites an impressive array of statistics about the programme.

To date, about half-a-million people have been screened. Eight Oba residences have been visited, where people’s eyesight was examined over the course of five days. The mobile clinics have also distributed more than 20,000 pairs of glasses (while up to 100,000 spectacles have been issued since the start of the programme in 2000).

The United States-based Walgreens pharmacy has donated 400,000 pairs of spectacles to the programme. Previously, all glasses were bought by state officials.

Plans are now being made to extend the service to neighbouring states.

“We discover that people have come from neighhouring states to receive glasses free since the programme started. The good thing about it is that there is no element of bias: we do not look at your tribe, religion or party affiliation. Everybody who comes forward is attended to,” an official from the programme told IPS.

Erikitola lists cataracts and glaucoma – a condition of having too much fluid pressure within the eyeball – as being the two leading causes of blindness. Both of these conditions are treatable.

“We have found out that over 80 per cent of the incidence of blindness is due to reversible causes. Since cataracts, which are the major cause of blindness, are reversible through surgery, patients are able to gain their sight through this programme and live a normal life again,” she said.

“Also, if (glaucoma) is picked up early during the free screening exercise and (the patient) given surgery and medication, we are able to prevent further damage and in so doing we are able to prevent blindness in our society,” she adds.

In a country where little provision is made for those with disabilities, avoiding blindness can mean the difference between survival and destitution. The sight of blind people begging on the streets of Lagos is a common one.

Patients interviewed by IPS at the Iba Town clinic earlier this month (Jun. 16) were relieved at the relative proximity of the facility.

“I started having problems with my eyes last year October. But because of time, I did not go to the general hospital or our local government headquarters,” said Agnes Falomo, a trader.

“Today, I have been tested, I have received glasses. But, I have been referred to the general hospital for further tests. I pray I will not need any surgery,” she added.

Esther Akinyele, another trader, observed, “I notice for a long time that I cannot see far, but I was told that getting glasses is very costly so I just left myself to fate.”

“But when this programme came to the Oba’s palace, I came to be tested and I have received my glasses free. I thank God and the Lagos State government for this free eye service.”

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jun 3 2004 (IPS)

It’s a phenomenon that became noticeable in the 1980s, and is now a permanent feature of the urban landscape in Nigeria: children hawking goods on the streets.

Take 10-year-old Bimbo Dada, for example. Last week, IPS found her meandering between vehicles in one of Lagos’ many traffic jams – also referred to as “go slows” – selling sachets of water to motorists. Although the Lagos State government has banned trading in traffic jams because of the dangers it poses to hawkers, the practice continues unabated due to lack of enforcement.

“I no go school. My mama go market, but me I sell pure water to help am. I sell one bag one day (I do not go to school; I help sell sachets of water to help my mother who is a trader. I sell a bag per day),” Bimbo said in the pidgin English spoken widely in Nigeria. A sachet of water sells for less than one U.S. cent.

John Obinna, a 15-year-old school dropout who came to Lagos from the eastern part of Nigeria about two years ago, fends for himself. Obinna and three other friends sell mobile phone recharge cards to motorists. At the end of the day, the four return to their one room apartment rented in Makoko, a slum on the mainland area of Lagos.

“With the money we make from selling in go slows we all contribute to pay for one room in Makoko because we do not have anyone to stay with. The room costs 200 naira (about two dollars) a month. We also feed ourselves from the money we make,” Obinna told IPS.

A wide-ranging Child Rights Bill that was signed by President Olusegun Obasanjo in July last year seeks to check child hawking by prescribing penalties for the parents and guardians who allow children onto the streets. Amongst other things, it states that no child should be subjected to any forced or exploitative labour – or employed to work in any capacity except where the child is employed by a member of their family on light work of an agricultural, horticultural or domestic character.

People who contravene this provision risk being fined up to about 500 dollars, or imprisoned for a five-year term – or both. However, the law has yet to be properly implemented.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), eight million children are engaged in some form of exploitative child labour in Nigeria – the term ‘exploitive’ referring to situations where children are below the age of 15, and paid less than the minimum wage. These children work as domestic servants, and do menial jobs in markets, garages and factories. Some are also used as guides by their beggar parents.

Street trading, especially by children, appears to have started with the introduction of an International Monetary Fund structural adjustment plan in the late 1980s, which led to the devaluation of the currency, a withdrawal of subsidies on items such as fuel, water and electricity – and job cuts.

Parents who could no longer afford school fees withdrew their children from the education system. In an effort to help families make ends meet, some of these children were engaged as domestic servants to wealthy households, as car washers and watchers, bus conductors – and street hawkers.

A ray of hope was cast onto the situation this past weekend, when government enacted a law providing for free and compulsory education for Nigerian children up to the junior secondary school level. (The country presently runs what is called the “six, three, three, four” system of education, which allows for six years of primary schooling, three years in junior secondary school, three years in senior secondary school and four years of tertiary education.)

Senator Florence Ita-Giwa, Presidential Special Assistant on National Assembly Matters, has warned that parents who failed to comply with the new law will be punished.

Peter Ebigbo, President of the Nigerian chapter of the African Network for the Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect, says the legislation could play an important role in reducing child hawking: “If made compulsory, it will help to reduce child labour.”

Shina Loremikan, Director of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, also praised government for taking this step.

“It is nice that government is now taking the free and compulsory education seriously, as this will take most of the child hawkers off the streets,” Loremikan told IPS.

He said that life on the streets tended to make many children aggressive. They were then open to manipulation by politicians intent on causing unrest, he added, as they were easily lured into going on a rampage, if paid.

“It is better if they are in school (and) it does not stop those who help boost the pockets of their parents from selling after school hours. Many of these street children become a big liability to the nation when they grow up as they become hardened criminals, having lived their lives on the streets,” Loremikan observed.

“When they grow up as they are likely to drift into deviant activities because of their lowered self-esteem.”

Loremikan also called for government to encourage parents to keep their children in school by introducing tax incentives to this effect.

Although Nigeria is currently the world’s sixth largest oil producer, corruption has prevented this resource from benefiting the majority of the country’s inhabitants. According to the U.N. Human Development Report for 2003, about 70 percent of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Apr 22 2004 (IPS)

Nigeria’s police are cracking down on illegal firearms which, they say, are threatening Africa’s most populous country.

Tafa Balogun, Nigeria’s police chief, issued an order to crackdown on the illicit firearms three weeks ago. Since then, large numbers of weapons have been retrieved and 105 suspects arrested.

Balogun has ordered the gun owners to submit their weapons voluntarily to the police or risk being apprehended.

“It has been a massive success as large numbers of illegal weapons were recovered from armed robbers, political thugs and firearm manufacturers,” Chris Olakpe, a police spokesman in the Nigerian administrative capital of Abuja, told IPS.

Olakpe said 211 weapons were recovered by the ‘Task Force on the Recovery of Illegal Firearms’ since the order was introduced on Mar. 14.

The weapons recovered consist of 64 pistols, three pump-action guns, two sub-machine guns, 126 AK-47 riffles, five double-barrel guns and 11 single-barrel guns as well as 3547 round of live ammunitions.

The police also impounded large numbers of arms and ammunitions which were smuggled through neighbouring Ghana and Benin Republic.

Last week the police in western Nigeria’s Oyo State capital of Ibadan paraded three suspects for allegedly importing a large consignment of ammunitions through the porous border between Nigeria and Benin Republic.

The suspects were arrested at Saki, a town between the two countries, along with three trucks. The trucks were carrying 105,000 live cartridges packed in 80 sacks, mixed with bags of maize and sawdust to beat detection. Preliminary investigations show that the consignments were smuggled from Kpobe in Benin Republic.

Recently a 24-year-old gunrunner, Ugochukwu Okeke, was arrested with 16 firearms concealed in a bag containing second-hand shoes, after beating security at Togo and Benin Republic borders.

The guns – all made in Russia – were bought at Tudu arms market in Ghana and transported through Togo and Benin Republic to Nigeria.

Okeke confessed to the police that he visited the market several times to import guns and ammunitions. His customers included politicians, petty criminals, assassins and robbers in Onitsha, eastern Nigeria.

The street value of a Russian made single-barrel gun is 25, 000 Naira (about 250 dollars) in Onitsha. A double-barrel gun sells for 35,000 Naira (about 350 dollars) while a pump-action gun fetches 75,000 Naira (about 750 dollars), according to the gunrunner.

Olakpe could not tell the number of illegal arms in circulation in Nigeria, but it is believed to outnumber those in police armoury nationwide. “I don’t know the total number of illegal firearms in circulation. I am not a magician,” he told IPS.

Another police officer, who declined to be named, told IPS, “Firearm licence is issued only for hunting but a lot of prominent Nigerians acquire guns for self-protection or for selfish-political interests. Criminals also buy guns illegally for their nefarious activities. In fact, both politicians and criminals never register their weapons.”

A few years ago the government announced a ban on the licensing of firearms to curb criminal activities.

To apply for a hunting gun, the applicant must fill all the necessary forms and get a letter of ‘good conduct’ from a senior police officer or an army officer or a judge or a clergy. A doctor must also attest that the person is fit to carry a gun while final approval for the license is given by a police commissioner.

Last month (March) security operatives uncovered an illegal arms manufacturing factory in northern Nigeria’s Katsina State.

At least ten persons, including a dismissed sergeant, were arrested during a raid on the factory following confessions by some arrested armed robbers in the state. The ex-sergeant’s factory was alleged to be a major source of arms to bandits that have terrorised members of the public in Katsina and other neighbouring states.

“The ex-sergeant did not only produce locally made pistols but converted them to automatic firearms that can use automatic bullets,” explained Alhaji Fakai, Katsina State Commissioner of police.

Two weeks ago the police in Abuja paraded 19 suspected local manufacturers of illegal arms and ammunitions with large caches of firearms worth several millions of Naira. The suspects were arrested in Abala, a village in Abia State, eastern Nigeria.

The weapons recovered from the suspects, who will soon appear in court, include 96 AK-47 riffles, 93 magazines and pistols.

“The arrest of the 19 firearms manufacturers, which followed a tip off, in Abia State marks a breakthrough in efforts at mopping up illegally acquired firearms,” Olakpe said.

He appealed to Nigerians to continue to provide the police with information on criminals and their hideouts. He said the police would not rest until sanity was brought to the proliferation of illegal arms and ammunitions in the country.

The police are also targeting politicians. It is widely believed that top politicians raise private armies during elections. Sometimes they use them to eliminate political opponents.

Twenty guns and more than 100 live ammunitions were recovered by the police from politicians in Delta State during March’s local government polls. The weapons recovered include AK-47 riffles and pistols.

Most of the weapons given out to thugs to intimidate political opponents during last year’s elections, according to police, were never recovered. They were used for criminal activities.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 30 2004 (IPS)

The ruling People’s Democratic Party in Nigeria has won local elections in almost all the 31 states where polls were held this weekend – even as election-related violence claimed up to 50 lives.

Low voter turnout signaled a lack of confidence in the electoral process, with many people convinced that state officials would use fair means and foul to ensure a victory by the party in power, in that state.

“It was a forgone conclusion that it would be a waste of time to file out to vote,” said Remi Anifowose, a political scientist at the University of Lagos. “Many people just conceded it to the PDP (People’s Democratic Party) or ruling parties in the different states.”

The All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), the main opposition group, managed victories in Kano, Kebbi and Sokoto states, all in northern Nigeria. Further south, the Alliance for Democracy (AD) won control of Lagos state. Other parties had boycotted the poll in this region to protest the fact that elections were being held in newly created constituencies.

National government said it had to formally approve these constituencies before polls could be held in them – a claim disputed by state authorities.

Itse Sagay, a constitutional lawyer, believes the states have right on their side in this matter. “The National Assembly has to amend the constitution to reflect the new local governments, and until that is done they cannot approve funds to the new ones from the federation account,” he said.

“But the creation and existence of new councils is the state government’s responsibility. The states can fund the new councils from federal allocations to the old councils,” Sagay added.

Some view the entire system of local government with a jaundiced eye, claiming that the funds allocated to constituencies are often misappropriated.

“Whatever resources accrue to government is just shared among the politicians and not channeled towards the development of the people. The dividends of democracy, which are good roads, pipe-borne water, electricity – are not forthcoming, so the people are very pessimistic about their future,” said Anifowose.

Opposition parties in many states have rejected the outcome of the polls, while the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 180 civil society groups that monitored Saturday’s voting, also described the election as a sham.

Jamiu Egbodoku, Lagos State chairman of the ANPP, said “In Lagos State, what we had on Saturday was no election. The governor just selected his people into office and went ahead to quickly swear them into office.”

“Where in the world do you have an election and within two days swear in the people without giving room for objections and petitions as prescribed by the electoral act?” he asked. The ANPP says it will go to court to overturn the election results in Lagos state, a course which parties in other states are also following.

In Enugu state, eastern Nigeria, three parties are contesting the PDP’s landslide victory. The ANPP and AD have also queried the PDP’s success in the southern Delta state, saying ballots were not cast in many constituencies there.

In the south-western Osun state, the discontent took a violent turn when the supporters of six parties that are contesting another PDP victory torched four houses.

TMG Chairman Festus Okoye said the group viewed the weekend poll as flawed because the State Independent Electoral Commissions that organized the local elections were not considered independent. He also pointed to the lack of up-to-date voters’ registers, prohibitive nomination fees for candidates and arbitrary disqualifications of people who had wished to contest the polls.

“Cases of electoral fraud and malpractices were recorded in many of the polling stations. These included impersonation, under-age voting, multiple voting, stuffing of ballot boxes and snatching of ballot boxes,” said the TMG.

“It is doubtful whether, given the substantial flaws that attended the preparations and the level of irregularities observed on election day, the elections can in any way be considered to be reflective of the will of the people,” it added.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 27 2004 (IPS)

Low voter turnout, boycotts and a lack of ballot papers in various wards have marred local government elections in Nigeria, which took place on Saturday (Mar. 27) in 31 of the country’s 36 states.

About nine people were also reported to have been killed the day before the vote in Port Harcourt, eastern Nigeria, in what some viewed as a political attack. Thousands of troops were stationed across the country to prevent further violence.

In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub, youths took advantage of a ban on traffic to turn highways into football pitches – while other prospective voters used the temporary lull to clean out their houses. Some said their reluctance to cast ballots stemmed from fears that state officials in charge of the election process would rig the vote in favour of their parties.

“I do not have any reason to go out to vote. The results have already been decided, so why must I waste my time?” asked Ayo Opabunmi, a 25- year-old. “We do not have leaders yet, (and) until this…old brigade (is) off the stage, I have decided never to go and queue for anybody for any election.”

Reports from Gusau, capital of the northern state of Zamfara, said in spite of appeals by the state government for people to go out and vote, attendance at polling stations was very low.

“Low turn-out can be attributed to lack of interest in the election and loss of confidence in the entire process,” a resident said.

The run-up to the poll was dogged by controversy over the creation of new local government constituencies in several states – constituencies which national authorities said were not recognized in Nigeria’s constitution.

While central government says it needs to approve these new areas, states maintain that they have the final say in creating new constituencies. A number of state governors view the government’s reluctance to alter the constituencies as a bid by the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to maintain control of their states.

Authorities in Lagos state, the most populous in Nigeria, said it was unfair for the region to have only 20 councils when other regions like Kano, the second most populous state, had 42. There are financial implications to the number of local authorities established in a state, as each constituency is entitled to government funding – which political parties are reportedly competing for.

Even though the PDP does not control Lagos state, it called for a boycott of the poll in Lagos city to protest the fact that elections were being held in newly established wards. The party had filed a court appeal to prevent polls from going ahead in these constituencies, but a judge ruled that the vote could proceed in all 37 of the new wards.

In the northern state of Gombe, the opposition All Nigerian Peoples Party also called an election boycott to protest the disqualification of some of its candidates.

Elections did not take place in three constituencies in the highly volatile Niger delta area, in southern Nigeria, as authorities had feared ethnic violence would break out during the poll.

The Warri North, Warri South and Warri South-West wards have been conflict-prone during previous votes, due to leadership tussles among the three major ethnic groups in the area: the Ijaws, Itsekiris and Urhobos.

The poll was also postponed in two constituencies in the central state of Kogi, where the chairman of the State Independent Electoral Commission and a politician were killed by unknown assailants early this month.

This formed part of an upsurge of violence that has wracked Nigeria in recent weeks, something that the New York-based Human Rights Watch blamed on government’s failure to bring the perpetrators of earlier politically-motivated attacks to book.

The non-governmental organisation says this created a climate of impunity, with dire results. “Political candidates and their supporters are not hesitating to use violence to secure votes, because last year’s (general) elections taught them that they could get away with it,” said Human Rights Watch said in a press release.

Shina Loremikan, a public affairs analyst and coordinator of the Zero Corruption Coalition, says a victory in the local government polls might prove a mixed blessing for the political parties concerned.

“If there is no resource to sustain the newly created local governments, there will be problems for those elected now and this will rub off on their parties in future polls,” Loremikan told IPS.

Nigerians last voted in council elections in 1998. Local government officials were removed from office in 2002 at the expiration of their tenure and the councils have since been run by caretaker committees appointed by the state governments.

The latest council polls were originally scheduled for early 2003, but postponed several times because of disputes over a date for the ballot, the need for a review of the voters’ register and allegations of bias on the part of State Independent Electoral Commissions.

Of the five states where no polls took place, Niger and Sokoto had held their polls earlier – while Anambra, Jigawa and Yobe postponed theirs to a later date.

Excerpt:

By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Mar 26 2004 (IPS)

The prospects for cocoa farmers in West Africa have not appeared rosy in recent years, what with declining cocoa prices and reports of exploitive labour practices on their properties.

Organisations like the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have been working to assist these farmers, however. Recently, the IITA took another step forward in its efforts to help Nigerian cocoa producers by opening a trade and information centre in Bamikemo, a farming community in the country’s western Ondo state.

The centre, which forms part of the IITA’s Sustainable Tree Crops Project (STCP), is intended to give farmers up-to-date information about cocoa prices so that they can make informed decisions when they sell the beans.

If all goes according to plan, says IITA information manager Taye Babaleye, "The farmers (will) no longer be deceived by middlemen."

Babaleye told IPS that the centre will also help producers identify local and international markets for their cocoa, and put them in touch with foreign buyers. In addition, it will help the farmers make contact with banks to that they can borrow funds to expand their operations.

Added Charles Akinola, National Coordinator of the STCP in Nigeria, "More money is expected to come into the pockets of the farmers: once again, cocoa production will be rewarding."

"We expect to replicate what we are doing here in Bamikemo in several other parts of the state and (other) cocoa-producing states in Nigeria," he said.

Funding for the initiative – which was launched over the weekend of Mar. 20 to 21 – is being provided by the United States Agency for International Development, the global chocolate industry and the Ford Foundation amongst others.

The STCP has also taken steps to improve the technology and methods of cultivation used by Nigerian cocoa growers.

Chris Okafor, Pilot Project Manager for the STCP, says that since October 2002 farmers’ field schools have been established in three areas of Ondo, where growers learn about pest control, pruning techniques and the nurturing of young plants. These lessons continue during the entire year-long cropping cycle.

"Through the FFSs (farmers’ field schools), over 1,300 farmers have been trained and are expected to share their new skills and knowledge with (their) neighbours," Okafor explained.

Joseph Okewande, a 67-year-old farmer and trainee at one of the schools, said the STCP’s initiative had helped him considerably.

"We discussed the problems facing cocoa farmers. The trainers tell us how to control pests, what pesticides to use, what quantity to be applied to ensure safety. They also taught us the best way to produce standard cocoa, so that we can get more money for our labour," he told IPS.

"Since they came here our cocoa has been doing well. We have been selling our produce better than before as we now negotiate directly with exporters and not middlemen."

A farmers union based in Bamikemo has been a key partner of the STCP in its bid to improve cocoa production in Nigeria.

"The Tonikoko Farmers Union has been the focal point of our activities in Nigeria, to…look at how we can train the farmers and how we can more efficiently link them and their produce to the market," says Stephan Weise, the STCP’s Regional Programme Manager.

With assistance from the West Africa Cocoa Agriculture Project, the delicate issue of using child labour on farms is also discussed with the growers. Tonikoko currently has a membership of over 1,500 farmers.

Nigeria’s cocoa beans are currently selling for about 1,500 dollars a tonne on the international market – against last year’s price of 2,100 dollars.

The price of the country’s cocoa has dropped over the past two decades as the quality of the beans declined. This has been ascribed, in part, to the disappearance of cocoa boards which set standards for the industry.

Production has also fallen from more than 200,000 tonnes annually to less than 130,000 tonnes per year.

"A concerted effort needs to be made both in terms of training the farmers to use more efficient technologies in producing cocoa, as well as retraining them in how to produce

quality cocoa through appropriate drying methods," said Weise.

At the regional level, the STCP is also conducting programmes in Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea and the Ivory Coast.

Established in 1967 to improve methods of tropical food production, the IITA is based in the western Nigerian city of Ibadan.

Excerpt: