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Subject: NIGERIA: Focus on Nigeria's  militias [2001023]
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NIGERIA: Focus on Nigeria's militias

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

LAGOS, 23 October (IRIN) - Worried by the pervasive activities of armed
bandits who have defied the best efforts of the police in his region,
Abdulkadir Kure, governor of Niger State in northern Nigeria, is considering
a somewhat drastic step.

"If by the next two weeks the situation is not brought under control, then
we will be left with no choice than to devise our own means of securing our
people. Call it Niger Peoples' Congress if you like," Kure said early
last week.

If Kure goes ahead with his threat, he would only be following a trend
already widespread in Africa's most populous country of over 110 million
people. Ethnic militias are increasingly appearing and tasking themselves
with fighting spiralling crime, often with the backing of local authorities.

But as recent events have demonstrated, the emergence of such groups that
are wont to take the law into their own hands portends potentially
combustible danger for a country with Nigeria's ethnic and religious mix.

On 15-18 October, Lagos, the country's commercial capital and biggest city
with its more than 10 million people, was in turmoil after ethnic clashes
broke out between local Yorubas and mainly Muslim Hausa speakers from the
north over the alleged lynching of a suspected thief by vigilantes of the
militant Yoruba Oodua Peoples' Congress (OPC).

More than 100 people were killed, scores of houses were torched and
thousands displaced in an orgy of ethnic violence that began in a slum
district of Lagos. It was only brought under control by a combined team of
police and soldiers after the unrest had spread to several parts of the
southwestern city.

Containing an unprecedented wave of crime and social discontent spawned
by more than 15 years of corrupt misrule by soldiers is one of the most
daunting tasks facing the third civilian government in the country's 40-year
post-colonial history. Over that period, oil-rich Nigeria dropped below
levels of social development attained at independence and crime surged.

Under military rule, the police became largely ineffective, especially
during
the five years that late General Sani Abacha was in power. As has officially
been revealed, he regularly sent bullion vans to the Central Bank of Nigeria
to retrieve money. Abacha had an estimated $4 billion or more stashed away
in various foreign accounts when he died in June 1998.

"A pattern also emerged in national crime records showing that more often
than not criminal gangs had links to people who had received weapons
training of some sort, either as serving or former armed forces or state
security personnel," Chima Okike, a lawyer, told IRIN. "And as a perception
of widespread collusion permeated the public consciousness, mutual distrust
with the security forces only deepened." 

Many political analysts also think widespread dissatisfaction with the
practice of the nation-state, inherited from British colonialists by the
more than 250 ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria, partly explains the
emergence of ethnic militias in different parts of the country.

In most of the Igbo areas of southeast Nigeria, the police force has
lost its pride of place as a law enforcement authority. This is best
illustrated in the city of Onitsha, a teeming commercial centre of some one
million people on the bank of the River Niger.

In place of the police emerged a youth vigilante group known as Bakassi
Boys. Armed with guns and their favorite weapons, machetes, the vigilantes
operate with the support of the local governor and are reputed to employ
magical powers in sniffing out suspected bandits and robbers. Arrested and
confirmed bandits usually have their head and limbs chopped off, gathered in
a heap and set ablaze in the full glare of the public to serve as a
deterrent.

Nigerian human rights groups are alarmed at the development, but the Bakassi
Boys are popular with the residents of the city, a fact demonstrated by
spontaneous demonstrations of support that broke out when President Olusegun
Obasanjo ordered the group disbanded in July.

"An armed robber will take your money and shoot you without going to court,
without trial. If you catch a confirmed armed robber and you kill him the
human rights (people) are shouting, is it fair?," Chinwoke Mbadinuju, a
lawyer and governor of Anambra State who backs the Bakassi Boys, said
in a recent interview.

The Bakassi Boys phenomenon first emerged more than a year ago in Aba,
another key trading centre in southeast Nigeria. Although the group is
linked to a traditional cult of the small Ogoni ethnic minority, its
activities have
been confined to the areas populated by Igbos, the main group in the
southeast. 

Among the Yoruba, the main ethnic group in the southwest, the OPC has been
carrying out a similar programme of burning suspected criminals with disused
car tyres as part of an avowed wider objective of promoting Yoruba
interests.

In the Niger Delta oil region, youth groups, often drawing inspiration from
ancestral war cults, hold sway over the area's impoverished communities.
They frequently disrupt oil production to question the authority of the
central government and multinational companies, which they accuse of
depriving them of oil wealth produced on their land.

In the predominantly Muslim north of the country, similar dissatisfaction
has manifested itself in religious terms. Several state governments have
introduced strict application of Islamic or Sharia law, prescribing
amputation of limbs and even decapitation for certain criminal offences. The
new judicial regime is usually enforced using militias that operate much
like their counterparts in other parts of the country.

Another telling illustration of how dangerously the trends could mingle in a
setting like Nigeria was in February, when opposition to the planned
introduction of Sharia in the northern state of Kaduna led to ethnic and
religious riots that claimed more than 700 lives in two days.

Many of the victims were Igbo Christians and retaliatory killing of Muslim
northerners started by the Bakassi Boys in the city of Aba and nearby
Umuahia town left another 300 dead. Kaduna witnessed another flare-up in
May, and the situation remains tense in many of Nigeria's cities, making
Obasanjo's task of governance even more difficult.

Obasanjo's initial attempt to rein in the Bakassi Boys was easily
interpreted as biased and heavy handed in the face of his inability to do
the
same to the OPC operating in his Yoruba homeland or to Sharia
vigilantes, whose activities allegedly violate the constitution. His
strategy appeared to be to come to terms with each to the extent possible.

But all that may have changed with the decision to ban the OPC and crack
down
on similar organisations: OPC leader Fredrick Fasehun was arrested following
the latest flare-up of violence.

However, there are many people who think broader action is needed.

"Poverty is the main fuel driving Nigeria's endemic communal violence, and
Obasanjo needs to reverse its devastation of the social fabric before he can
truly bring the associated problems to a halt," Okike said.

[ENDS]

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