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IRIN-WA Update 547 of events in West Africa (Thursday 9 September 1999)
NIGER: ECHO to send aid to thousands in the north
People displaced by war in northern Niger in the early 1990s will receive aid worth 280,000 euro (US $303,000) from the European Union, a source at the EU's humanitarian agency, ECHO, told IRIN on Thursday.
Some 70,000 persons, mainly in the northern districts of Agadez and Tahoua, will benefit directly and another 150,000 indirectly from the humanitarian aid. They were displaced in 1990-1995 by fighting between Tuareg rebels and government troops in the north.
"This amount marks the fourth stage of help since 1997 in support of the peace process," the ECHO (European Community Humanitarian Office) source said.
The aid will go towards income-generating activities, food security, provision of water, and the rebuilding of infrastructure. It will be distributed by the European NGOs Cooperazione per lo sviluppo dei paesi emergenti (COSPE), Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and PremiËre Urgence (PU).
MALI-SENEGAL: Railway line reopens
The railway line from Bamako to Dakar reopened on Wednesday following repairs to two bridges damaged by rain, a Malian diplomatic source in Senegal told IRIN.
The bridges, which are near the town of Kayes in western Mali, have been impassable since 1 August.
The railway carries about 17 percent of the goods traded between Mali and other countries, according to Reuters.
CAMEROON: Water rationing
Water is now being rationed in Yaounde, Cameroon, because of a shortage caused by problems at a treatment plant since the end of July, news organisations reported.
Yaounde has now been divided into three sectors, each of which will receive water three times a week.
The shortage is reportedly due to leaking pipeline at a treatment plant some 50 km south of Yaounde, which the Cameroonian water authority, SNEC, does not have the technological capacity to repair.
Officials have blamed the Canadian company that built the system and which has since left Cameroon.
Medical experts reportedly say that some Yaounde citizens have begun to use other, less safe, sources of water and there are fears of an increase in diarrhoea, typhoid and bilharzia.
LIBERIA: No easy road ahead
Improving security, repairing an economy battered by war, restoring electricity and water services, and fighting unemployment are some of the challenges that Liberia now faces.
[See separate item titled `LIBERIA: IRIN special report on the challenges ahead']
NIGERIA: President seeks churches' help against corruption
President Olusegun Obasanjo has asked Nigeria's churches for help in his crusade to uproot corruption.
"I appeal to the church this day to go after those who are lost to drugs, who are lost to crime, who are lost to corruption," he said in a message read on his behalf by Justice Minister Kanu Agabi at a meeting in the central town of Jos of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria.
Appealing for church action against other forms of immorality, he said the institution must meet society's moral, social, intellectual and political needs.
Meanwhile, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has said the Nigerian press had performed well in buttressing government's fight against corruption, but should continue to do so through factual reporting.
"I believe the press has been wonderful in their investigative reports, but I don't believe that their trials should take place on the pages of newspapers," `The Guardian' reported him as saying.
Support for the anti-corruption drive has also come from the
African Development Bank (ADB). Visiting ADB president, Omar Kabbaj, said at a dinner in Abuja that the Bank "fully supports" Obasanjo's efforts to build good government.
Kabbaj said the bank was ready to help its members achieve economic growth and social development, and reduce poverty.
Government likes idea of state police
A constitution review committee is to be set up in Nigeria to debate calls by states and local governments for their own police forces, Information Minister Dapo Sarumi said this week.
Sarumi told reporters after a Federal Executive Council meeting on Wednesday, that the presidency was inclined to support the idea, `The Guardian' newspaper said.
The Council resolved that the constitutional status of the federal police would be reviewed in the committee, which is to be formed by the national assembly. Analysts said Nigeria did have some form of local government control of police forces, but these were subject to pressure from local politicians.
Innocent Chukwuma of the Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Lagos told IRIN that some states now want to have control of state police commands within the federal framework while others, like Lagos and Abia, want forces modelled more along US lines.
Education Fund fraud
The Nigerian Senate will investigate the disappearance of at least 40 billion naira (US $400 million) from the Nigeria's education tax fund, AFP reported, quoting the chairman of the Senate Committee on Education. The fund was introduced in 1993 to raise money for education. It requires companies to contribute a percentage of their profits to the effort.
Additional funds for health ministry
Nigeria's Ministry of Health is to receive an extra two billion naira (US $20.68 million) to meet urgent needs, the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Nnamdi Eriobuna, said.
The national assembly last week approved a supplementary budget to cover capital and recurrent expenditure for the rest of 1999.
Eriobuna said on Tuesday in Lagos that the money would go to improving health standards and meeting the World Health Organisation's recommendation that 12 percent of a nation's annual budget go to the health sector.
Flood destroys grain in the north
Rain-fed flash floods have destroyed an estimated seven million naira (US $72,388) of farm produce in the northern state of Katsina, according to the area's representative in the Katsina House of Assembly, Alhaji Abdu Dutsin-Ma.
In a debate in the House, he said the rain caused the Zobe Dam located in the Dutsin-Ma local government area to overflow, washing away millet, groundnuts, guinea corn and beans.
He appealed for state and federal help to the affected farmers who, he said, were inadequately compensated when the site was acquired to build the dam. With the rainy season nearing its end and their corps destroyed, he said, the farmers might be left with nothing to depend on.
MAURITANIA: Council set up to regulate privatisations
Mauritania's government has created a new council to regulate the privatisation of state enterprises, AFP reported the office of that country's president as announcing on Tuesday.
The council's first task will be to oversee the privatisation of the telecommunications sector, scheduled for the beginning of the year 2000, AFP said.
It includes four members nominated by the state for a four-year term and is chaired by Mohammed Ould Cheikh Mohamedou, a former economic adviser of President Maouya Ould Taya.
Abidjan, 9 September 1999; 17:45 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1577
[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
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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