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IRIN-WA Update 478 of events in West Africa (Thursday 3 June)
NIGERIA: National Assembly opens
Nigeria's National Assembly was inaugurated on Thursday after 15 years of uninterrupted military rule by decree, news organisations reported.
Olusegun Obasanjo, who began his first working day in office as president on Monday, opened the 109-seat Senate and 360-seat House of Representatives after days of political infighting to pick the Senate speaker, Reuters reported.
Evan Enwerem emerged as the winner in the race for the speaker's seat over Chuba Okadigno, Reuters said. The position of speaker is reserved for members of the Igbo community, under a constitutional proviso to ensure that all ethnic groups share positions of responsibility. The speaker is a powerful post since he becomes head of state if the president or vice president dies.
News organisations said Obasanjo was due to address both houses of the assembly on Friday. After that, the assembly can begin confirmation hearings for his ministerial nominees.
The assembly last functioned fully in 1983 when soldiers overthrew President Shehu Shagari. In 1992, a national assembly was elected but its life was cut short after General Ibrahim Babangida annulled the 1993 presidential elections.
EU lifts sanctions
The European Union (EU) has restored cooperation with Nigeria, ruptured in 1995 following the hanging of nine Ogoni rights activists, the EU announced in Brussels. As a result, Nigeria could get soon 330 million euro granted before the executions, the EU said, quoted by PANA.
A return to democracy was a condition for lifting the sanctions, which included an arms embargo, travel restrictions on military personnel and politicians and a ban on sporting contacts.
The EU said renewed cooperation with Nigeria would focus mainly on ending poverty and corruption, strengthening democracy and good government.
Edo State governor mirror's president's example
Mirroring Obasanjo's first actions on taking office, the governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, suspended on Wednesday all contracts and appointments concluded this year.
All sales or transfers of government land within the same period have been cancelled and the beneficiaries ordered to stop development, `The Guardian' of Lagos reported on Wednesday.
Sources close to the state government said some transfers and sales went to ranking military officers, "most of them nonindigens", the newspaper reported. It said some civil commissioners and permanent secretaries "also took advantage of the transaction to appropriate some prime land to themselves".
LIBERIA: Taylor to support peace talks in Lome
President Charles Taylor of Liberia will go to Lome
on Friday in support of the effort to bring peace to
Sierra Leone, Liberian Deputy Information Minister
Milton Teahjay told IRIN on Thursday.
Teahjay said Taylor aimed to "work collectively and constructively with President Gnassingbe Eyadema to help bring the crisis in Sierra Leone to an end". Eyadema is brokering peace talks in Lome between the Sierra Leonean government and rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
Taylor will hold "broad-based consultations" with the RUF and government delegations during his two-day visit, Teahjay said.
[See separate item titled "Taylor to support peace talks in Lome"]
GUINEA BISSAU: Delivery of humanitarian aid delayed
The delivery of humanitarian supplies to Guinea Bissau was stepped up last week after delays linked to the closure of the border with Senegal during much of the month of May, according to humanitarian sources in Bissau.
"The closure of the border and confusion over whether the border was open or closed at a particular point in time has exacerbated delays in the delivery of much-needed humanitarian assistance," a humanitarian source told IRIN.
"The implications are particularly severe for the agricultural sector with the imminent arrival of the planting season." the source added.
For example, some 75 mt of seeds had been stuck in Senegal, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) in Guinea Bissau said in its most recent report, which covers the period from 18 to 31 May.
According to the report, the UN Resident Coordinator in Dakar contacted the Senegalese Minister of the Interior, who gave assurances that the border would be open for humanitarian assistance. As a result, two trucks carrying FAO agricultural supplies arrived in Bafata on 29 May, the OCHA report said.
The border's closure also delayed the arrival of health supplies.
Meningitis vaccination campaign
In spite of the difficulties, health, civic education
and food aid programmes continued. In the health sector,
for example, a nation-wide vaccination campaign against
meningitis covered more than one million persons, 95
percent of the population, as at the end of May, OCHA
reported.
Airport closed to commercial traffic
Meanwhile, the continued closure of Guinea Bissau's airport to commercial traffic prevented many aid workers from entering the country due to the limited number of seats available on the twice-weekly United Nations flights, according to OCHA. Carriers reportedly experienced difficulties, including technical problems.
NIGER: The unresolved issue of a president's death
News organisations reported this week that Niger's former defence minister, Yahaya Tounkara, has been placed under house arrest after calling for an investigation into the death of ex-president Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, killed in a coup on 9 April 1999.
On Wednesday, AFP quoted a private radio station in Niger as saying that Tounkara had been placed under house arrest. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted a similar report.
A media source in Niamey told IRIN there had been no official announcement that the ex-minister had been confined to his home. However, he said, presidential guards were deployed outside Tounkara's residence in Niamey and that, at least up to Thursday morning, they were still there.
Tounkara had read out a statement on Sunday in the town of Dogon-Doutchi, calling for an independent commission to be set up to investigate Mainassara's assassination.
Dogon-Doutchi is the capital of Arewa, the home region of both Tounkara and Mainassara, according to the media source, who told IRIN the statement had been issued on behalf of members of the former ruling party in Arewa.
On 25 May, foreign ministers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) called, at a meeting in Lome, for an independent investigation into Mainassara's assassination.
Their call came one day after the late president's family filed a suit in a Niamey court against his killers, designated X in the absence of identified suspects. The case was forwarded to the Justice Ministry on 1 June, the source said.
Meanwhile, a technical committee set up by the government of Major Daouda Mallam Wanke to draft a new constitution and other key texts has proposed the declaring of an amnesty that would cover both the 9 April overthrow and the coup that had brought Bare Mainassara to power on 27 January 1996.
Abidjan, 3 June 1999, 19:47 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-955
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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