Riotous Nigeria

By Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
May 12, 2004


1.
Nigerian President Obasanjo said, "I talked sternly to those who called themselves leaders who seem not to have played the role of leadership. I believe that enough is enough. When leaders fail to lead, the situation deteriorates."

He is correct. However, the same can be said about his apparent failed leadership too.

Riot is raging in Nigeria after a horrifying massacre occurred on May 2nd when "a gang from the Tarok ethnic group attacked the mainly Muslim market town of Yelwa, in the Shendam local government area of central Nigeria's Plateau State, 300 kilometers (187 miles) east of Abuja. Nigeria's central government estimated the death toll at between 200 and 300, while local officials and witnesses said more than 600 had died. The attack appears to have been a bid to drive Muslims out of the region."

Amnesty International (AI) reports the following: "In the recent spate of violence, the attackers, mainly Christian Taroks, were armed with assault rifles, machetes and bows and arrows. Most of the victims were Muslims, including an unconfirmed number of women and children. The official number of deaths is put at 67, although the clashes may have resulted in as many as 630 deaths. The Nigerian Red Cross estimates that some 7,500 people have fled the area as a result of the prevailing insecurity."

The Human Rights organizations like Amnesty International are particularly concerned since in the past the Nigerian law enforcement officials used excessive force that resulted in numerous unjustified killings of civilians, and they did not get any punishment for their brutality. This type of impunity stokes more resentment in the affected communities that can turn into more violence and riots.

The Channel News Asia reports a similar incident from the latest violence: "a car pulled up carrying four men with gunshot wounds, two of them shot in the stomach, two in the legs. "We're just in from Dorayi," said a panic-stricken man who arrived with the injured. "These people you see were shot by policemen sent to the area. This sends the wrong signal. Things could get worse there."

Already there are ominous signs. “Muslim leaders in Kano, a hotbed of past violence, linked the Yelwa attacks to the U.S.-led war against terror. "This violence is a calculated global Western war against Muslims, just like in Afghanistan and Iraq," Umar Ibrahim Kabo, the most senior Muslim cleric in Kano, told protesters. "Muslims are in grief."

Kano Governor Ibrahim Shekarau told protesters gathering outside his office that "killings of Muslims throughout the world ... will only embolden us."


2.
The recent turmoil in Nigeria is believed to be revenge for "another incident in Kawo village", in the same Plateau State. AI reports that in the last three months there have been at least 350 people killed in clashes and reprisal attacks between Christian Tarok farmers and Muslim Fuani cattle herders in different locations in Plateau state.

In September of 2001, morbid hostility broke out in Jos, the state capital. About 1000 people died from that bloodshed. Nigerian government “set up a commission of inquiry into the violence in Jos, but has still not published its findings.”

Violence continued unabated. Vengeance and revenge attacks were widespread in this region. Many believes that though there was a clear pattern of violence in Plateau State in the recent months, “with each community seeking to avenge attacks by their opponents, the latest outbreak should have come as no surprise to federal and state authorities, yet the Nigerian government took no action to preempt the massacre.”

Human Rights Watch, the U.S.A. based human rights organization claims that in the latest incident of killings of hundreds of Muslims, police and army reinforcements were only sent to Yelwa after hundreds of people had already been killed.


3.
Although Nigeria has enormous human and natural resources including oil and gas, it is puzzling to world’s many leading economists observing Nigeria’s mediocre economic and social indicators.

American Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz attended a Public Policy forum in Abuja last week where he said, "If oil is a national natural resource, it becomes a national responsibility on how the money from the oil is spent. In promotion of transparency and accountability, he said the people reserved the right to know how much was earned from oil resource. This principle of the peoples' right to know is extremely important even though government does not want it all the time."

And lack of transparency, widespread corruption in every level of Nigerian society have left large portion of population out of reach from economic benefits obtained from the lucrative natural resources industries.


4.
Like many other parts of the world, there are a few leaders who try to incite more violence, and that was what happened aftermath the Yelwa massacre. Now the Muslim youths are ostensibly engaged in revenge killing. In the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where the Muslim leader had his impassioned speech, connecting the massacre in Yelwa with the global war on terror, without providing any clear evidence; in the ensuing riot, at least 10 people were killed there after a protest rally.

In both Kano and the Plateau state, there are reports of lack of concrete efforts in diffusing tensions between the Muslim and the Christian communities. Many religious and human rights organizations believe that negotiations at the grass-roots level are needed to address contentious ethnic claims over land, cattle and political power alongside conducting impartial investigations on Yelwa and other massacres in the past.


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Mahbubul Karim (Sohel) is a freelance writer. His email address is: sohelkarim@yahoo.com.

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