| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
Tel: +225 21 73 54 Fax: +225 21 63 35 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org
IRIN-WA Update 484 of events in West Africa (Friday 11 June)
NIGERIA: IRIN Background report on Niger Delta crisis
Burnt-out buildings dot the centre of Nigeria's southern oil town of Warri. One week of bitter fighting involving its three main ethnic groups has left at least 20 people dead, scores of buildings in ruins and thousands of residents displaced.
Over 200 people have died in the Niger Delta region
- which includes Warri - since clashes began a day
after President Olusegun Obasanjo took office on 29
May. Fighting in the surrounding creeks between ethnic
Ijaws and Itsekiris sucked in the Urhobos on the side
of the Ijaws as the violence spread to Warri.
Unrest in the Delta, main source of the petroleum that
earns most of Nigeria's foreign exchange, has severely
disrupted oil exports in the past year. The latest
clashes are yet to have an impact on exports, but they
are indicative of how easily the situation could spin
out of control and pose the first major challenge for
Obasanjo as helmsman of Africa's most populous country,
with its more than 108 million people, analysts told
IRIN.
[for the full text see the IRIN backgrounder Item: irin-english-1008]
Obasanjo in Warri, Port Harcourt
Obasanjo has left the troubled town of Warri for Port Harcourt, 170 km to the souteast, where he is expected to meet with community leaders to discuss the problems of underdevelopment in the Niger Delta, news sources told IRIN.
Before leaving Warri, the scene of violent clashes between the Itsekiri, Ijaw and Urhobo over the site of a local government area, Obasanjo told the warring groups to begin talks and give his government time to develop the neglected oil-rich Delta.
"Our responsibility, our duty, our obligation is to redress the neglect of the past," Reuters quoted him as telling the Delta people, "but please, please give us the opportunity, give us time."
Political analyst Nimi Walson-Jack told IRIN the government of Abdulsalami Abubakar, who has been credited with returning democracy to Nigeria, did little during his short stay in office to bring immediately visible development to the Delta. Walson-Jack also said Obasanjo's government could immediately stop the fighting in Warri by giving a local government to each of the three ethnic groups fighting over the matter.
"If the people want a local government give them local governments," he said.
On Thursday, the Nigerian House of Representatives passed its first motion in 16 years, urging the government to take urgent security measures to quell the violence in Warri.
Blitzkrieg into military ranks
President Olusegun Obasanjo's blitzkrieg to rid in ridding the military of all officers who have held political appointments during the last 15 years will most likely be well received in the services and by the public, political analysts have said.
"The professionals (within the military) want a clean break with the past," Nimi Walson-Jack, executive director for the Port Harcourt based Centre for Responsive Politics, told IRIN on Friday.
Younger officers who have been concentrating on their military duties, he said, now had a chance to grow within the military and were unlikely to be tempted to organise coups. The public also appears to have little patience for an interventionist military, another analyst told Reuters.
"The military is not only morally disadvantaged on account of the abysmal failure of past political adventures, public opinion is decidedly against the soldiers," Anthony Maja, writer and analyst, told Reuters.
Obasanjo has, so far, purged the armed forces of 149 ranking officers. However, Walson-Jack said his crusade to professionalise and subordinate the military to civilian authority calls for even more forced retirements. "Any member of the armed forces who has been on any task force should leave the services." Walson-Jack said. These task forces were committees set up in the country's states which performed the work of civil servants, even within the customs service.
Following the clean up, Walson-Jack said, the president could go about building the kind of military that would make Nigeria proud.
"We want an armed forces that can be respected on the continent," he said.
SIERRA LEONE: Residents near Freetown short of food, medicine
Residents of towns close to the capital, Freetown, are short of food and medicines, humanitarian sources in Freetown told IRIN on Friday.
A humanitarian assessment mission that went to Port Loko on Wednesday, some 70 km northeast of Freetown, via Masiaka and Rogberi Junction found malnourished residents, some of them in an acute condition.
"People have been depending on mangoes for food and now the season is coming to an end, they will have to rely on food found in the bush," a source said. "They are also lacking basic medicines and commercial foods."
The mission, led by the UN Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU), travelled through areas held by the government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF). "We were well received by the RUF," the source said, "they showed a willingness to allow humanitarian agencies access and even invited us to travel on to Lunsar, some 30 km east of Port Loko."
Following the initial assessment, the humanitarian agencies
will now make of list of urgent humanitarian needs
and actions to be taken. The mission led by HACU, included
representatives from the World Food Programme, Children's
Aid Direct, CARE, the Sierra Leone Red Cross and the
UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone.
UNOMSIL say ceasefire generally holding, minor violations
The ceasefire between RUF rebels and pro-government troops is generally holding, except for a few minor incidents of rebels foraging for food, UNOMSIL sources told IRIN on Friday. The rebels send patrols to look for food which they either buy, beg for or loot, "but it is not a combat situation", UNOMSIL said.
In the ceasefire agreement signed on 18 May, the government and the RUF agreed "to grant safe and unhindered access by humanitarian organisations to all people in need". At the Lome peace talks a joint Implementation Committee, chaired by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator with representatives from the RUF, the government, civic society, the NGO community and UNOMSIL, was subsequently set up to facilitate humanitarian access.
GUINEA BISSAU: Ousted president arrives in Portugal
Ousted Guinea Bissau president Joao Bernando Vieira arrived in the northern Portuguese town of Oporto on Friday on the second leg of a trip that will allow him an opportunity to get medical care in France, news reports said.
Vieira left The Gambia on Thursday aboard a Portuguese military plane accompanied by the Portuguese ambassador to Guinea Bissau, Antonio Dias. Vieira had been in The Gambia since Sunday, where he arrived after seeking refuge in the Portuguese Embassy in Guinea Bissau after an army revolt forced him from power on 7 May.
The condition set by Guinea Bissau's Military Junta for allowing Vieira to leave the country for medical treatment was that he return and be tried for crimes against the state.
A Gambian Foreign Ministry official told IRIN on Friday that Vieira was expected to return to Guinea Bissau after "feeling better".
The French Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Vieira was welcome in France to continue his medical care at the Val de Grace Hospital in Paris.
The Resistencia da Guine-Bissau- Movimento Ba- Fata (RGB-MB), a political party, said Vieira's departure would enable him to lobby the international community to pressure the government in Bissau by curtailing development aid.
NIGER: fraud team recovered over a billion CFA
An anti-fraud squad in Niger has recovered 1.13 billion CFA francs (US $1.8million) owed to the government its spokesman said on Thursday on national radio, a source in Niamey told IRIN on Friday.
The National Commission Against Economic, Financial and Fiscal Delinquency created in May by the Conseil de Reconciliation Nationale (CRN) headed by Major Dauda Wanke, is investigating some 600 cases of fraud in government, the spokesman said. The investigations are an effort by the military government to clean up the management of state assets, primarily by recovering debts to the treasury.
The commission has taken over the role of a committee dissolved by the CRN after it took power in April, Reuters said. According to Retuers, the transitional government, which has promised to hold democratic elections in November, drew up an emergency budget for the May-July period but said that government revenue would only be about half the amount, Reuters reported.
In another development, the Ministry of Communication announced on Thursday a change in the law governing the the press and information, making it far less rigid, a news source told IRIN.
Inquiry into president's death
The CRN said it had ordered an official investigation into the death of former president Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, news organisations reported.
Justice Minister Laoualy Danda said on Tuesday that Mainassara's family had filed a complaint and the ministry had ordered the gendarmerie to open an inquiry, news organisations said.
Mainassara was shot dead at Niamey airport in April
by members of the presidential guard in what was described
then as "an unfortunate accident".
MALI: President's party wins local elections
President Alpha Oumar Konare's ruling Alliance pour la democratie au Mali (ADEMA) won 61.5 % of seats in local elections completed on 6 June, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The ADEMA alliance won 5,933 of the 9,647 available seats in the two-stage elections. Four of Mali's eight regions voted on 2 May. The other half voted last weekend, in when ADEMA won 59 percent of the ballot.
The local elections fall within a programme of administrative decentralisation in the West African nation, ending the process of legislative, presidential and municipal polls started two years ago.
Abidjan, 11 June 1999, 18:41 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1019
[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
| Previous Menu | Home Page | What's New | Search | Country Specific |