Curfew in Bauchi, North East Nigeria Over Religious Clash afp20090727614002 Abuja Hot fm in English 26 Jul 09

As at the time they were intercepted, they were traveling in a hired commercial bus with Kebbi State registration number.

While parading the suspects who all hail from Niger Republic, the state Comptroller of Immigration Service said preliminary interrogation and screening revealed that 'they are found to be security risk to the nation'.

He said: "We can't afford to sacrifice the security of this country. We are all aware of the recent crisis by people of this age bracket and leanings. The Inter agency cooperation and networking have paid off and we thank men of the Nigeria Police Force for their efforts in this regard.''

[Description of Source: Isheri Nigerian Compass Online in English -- Website of the privately owned newspaper close to former Rivers State Governor Peter Odili; URL: http://www.compassnewspaper.com]

Nigeria: Authorities Deport Islamist Sect Members to Niger

AFP20090820650002 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 1010 GMT 20 Aug 09

KANO, Aug 20, 2009 (AFP) - Nigeria has deported 300 suspected members of an Islamist sect to neighbouring Niger after a bloody uprising in its Muslim-dominated north by a fundamentalist group, officials said.

The alleged members of the 'Darul Islam' (house of Islam in Arabic) sect to their country of origin is part of a government plan to repatriate foreign sect members, a senior immigration official told AFP Thursday.

The sect members, including women and children, were deported on Monday in trucks and buses from Minna, capital of the central Niger State.

They had "no valid papers and proof of proper documentation and means of earning a living", Ibrahim Danladi Auta, said on telephone from Minna.

"They are the first batch of hundreds of foreigners we have planned to send back to their countires of origin after screening them and establishing their nationalities", Auta said.

About 1,500 policemen raided the sect's compound on Saturday in Mokwa, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Minna, weeks after an uprising by a self-styled Taliban fundamentalist sect left 800 dead, Niger State police commissioner Mike Zuokumor said.

He said the action followed complaints by the state government that the activities of the group could cause a religious crisis in the state and fears of possible deadly violence like the uprising last month by the Boko Haram group.

[Description of Source: Paris AFP (World Service) in English -- world news service of the independent French news agency Agence France Presse]

Nigeria: Yar'Adua Said Trapped Between Islamists in North, MEND Fighers in South

AFP20090812638003 Paris Jeune Afrique in French 09 Aug 09 - 15 Aug 09 pp 34-35

[Report by Marianne Meunier: "Yar'Adua Caught Between Two Fires"]

The Islamists are in the north, while pro-independence fighters of the Niger Delta are in the south. The head of state is fighting on several fronts thus endangering the unity of the country.

A week after the end of the Maiduguri massacre, the Nigerian police and the Red Cross were still counting the decomposing corpses that are often thrown into mass graves right in the streets. The police counted 700 victims while the Red Cross put the toll at 1,000. But whatever its source and its evolution, the result of the clashes between the security forces and the followers of Boko Haram -- an Islamic sect that supports the implementation of shari'ah (the Islamic law) throughout the whole country and also hostile to any reference to western culture - already makes one to shudder.

Five days, from 26 to 30 July, were enough to put to fire and the sword the capital of Borno, this northern Nigerian state with borders with Chad and the Republic of Niger and which counts a little over four million people.

Five days of exchange of fire and explosions that paralyzed the inhabitants who were frightened of being mistaken for the followers of "Boko Haram" by the security forces.

"Operation Flush": the name given to the joint mission -- between the army and the police -- deployed in Maiduguri announced the deadly nature damages. "The method used by the security forces in indiscriminately killing innocent inhabitants and the adepts of Boko Haram is unbelievable," protested Shamaki Gad Peter, chairman of the Human Rights League in Jos, Plateau State (the Central Region of the country). According to him, street hawkers as well as members of the sect who had already laid down their weapons were targeted by the security officers.

Could these be pointless deaths? The question also refers to the death of Mohammed Yusuf, 39, the presumed leader of that religious movement. Captured alive on 30 July, he was later showed to journalists with his corpse riddled with bullets. Was he killed by the soldiers? To the NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW) that evoked extra-judiciary execution, there is no doubt about that. Consequently, the head of state has ordered for an inquiry.

Elected in April 2007, Umaru Yar'Adua, 58, is the first civilian to rule over Nigeria since its independence. Contrary to all his predecessors, this president, an academic and former chemistry lecturer, never passed through any military barracks or bore any grade stripes. Nevertheless, his civilian clothing was not enough to deter the security forces from their traditional reflex inherited from the long period when they were taking and keeping power: making them to believe, thanks to an atmosphere of generalized impunity, that they can do everything they like.

TRIGGER HAPPY

In November 2008 the events in Jos had already confirmed that the "Khakis" had always been trigger-happy. On 28 and 29 [November 2008] allegations of electoral rigging during local assembly elections led to fighting between Christians and Muslims. The security forces intervened to restore order. According to HRW, the toll of the two infernal days was 700 deaths including 130 "arbitrary ones" and "the operation involved both the police and the army."

Umaru Yar'Adua had nothing to do with it: on the contrary, the governor of the Plateau State (of which Jos is the capital) and member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), had given the order to meet fire with fire. He was taken for his word.

Always afraid of the breaking up of a federation of 140 million citizens, 36 states, and 1,000 cracks, Yar'Adua, the civilian, does not hesitate to resort to the use of force to curb the propagation of violence. In May this year, a joint mission of the army and police was launched in the south "to completely chase out" the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), this nebulous group of militiamen which, with the backing of some local politicians, is demanding a fairer share of the oil revenue through abductions and sabotaging oil installations.

However, "Restore Hope" -- the name of the operation was counterproductive: to the air raids (which did not spare villages in the area), the rebels retaliated with a threat of an imminent "hurricane." The storm was really launched two months later. On 12 July, the MEND dynamited a jetty inside the Lagos port, leaving at least five people dead. The MEND, which ordinarily limits itself to its stronghold, the Delta region -- which brings together the oil producing states of the federation --, this time, hit the economic capital, which constitutes quite a symbolic development.

In the north as well as in the Niger Delta region, the radical raids of the army rather reopened the old and deep wounds that are occasionally remembered by Nigerian leaders. In Jos, or in the northern states of Kaduna and Kano, Olusegun Obassanjo, Yar'Adua's predecessor, had already had a religious problem. In the Niger Delta, demands of the armed movements are not a new issue.

The central government in Abuja today finds trapped in the middle as it was in the past. On one hand, there is a northern agricultural Sahelian region - chiefly cotton and groundnut producing areas -- devoid of infrastructures; a north where 12 states hid themselves behind the shari'ah law at the beginning of the 2000's. Seen as a way of guarding against the failure of the judiciary system and in a more general term, as a way of checking the socio-economic problems, the Islamic law has created among Christians in the region (the minority) a strong feeling of isolation, which is propitious for inter-religious conflicts. On the other hand, here we are with a Niger Delta, in isolation, very rich in oil resources -- Nigeria is the leading oil producer in Africa -- but of which the sole local repercussions are the impoverishment of the 31 million inhabitants of the region and the pollution of their immediate environment.

ANGER AND FUSTRATION

In the end, there is, on either side of Nigeria, anger and frustration, a feeling of injustice, and a state of neglect by the central government, constituting a cocktail that is regularly exploited by the local administrations. "The acts of violence in the north and in the Niger Delta are caused by the failure of the government to provide opportunities," Corinne Dufka, director of the Dakar HRW bureau, explained.

To her, if military reprisals do not cause any collateral casualties, they are "legitimate but largely insufficient. What is needed is to fight corruption."

Corruption is an omnipresent ill, which is eating into all the aspects of political and economic life in Nigeria. On this issue, by creating an ad hoc structure, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Olusegun Obasanjo showed firm handedness because the said commission scored some successes with the arrest of some governors. But with Yar'Adua, "the country has moved back on the issue because there is no more political willingness to arrest the big shots involved in acts of corruption," a source in Lagos that wanted to remain anonymous felt.

Judged to be more inclined to dialogue than his predecessor, Yar'Adua particularly tackled the Niger Delta problem. He tried some policies of openness such as the amnesty that he granted to the combatants of the rebel movements or the creation in September 2008 of the Ministry of the Delta Affairs that have not yet yielded any results. But the decision was very much criticized... in the north of the country. "If the government creates a ministry for all those who are shouting, how many ministries will there be in the country?" a religious leader in the northern state of Sokoto wondered ironically with a touch of jealousy.

[Description of Source: Paris Jeune Afrique in French -- Privately owned, independent weekly magazine]

AQIM Calls Crackdown on Islamic Sect 'Crusade' Against Muslims

FEA20090820905062 - OSC Feature - Jihadist Websites -- OSC Summary 19 Aug 09

On 19 August, forum participant "Murasil al-Fajr" posted a statement to the Islamic Al-Fallujah Forums website from the Al-Qa'ida Organization in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQLIM) entitled "A Statement of Condolence, Support, and Solace to Our Brothers and People in Nigeria." In this statement, the group describes the recent clashes in Nigeria as a "Crusade" by the Christian minority against Islam to "destroy Islam and annihilate its people." The statement was published by the Al-Fajr Media Center.

The Islamic Al-Fallujah Forums website, formerly known as Al-Fallujah Islamic Minbar, at www.al-faloja.info/vb is a jihadist forum containing discussions and statements in support of the insurgency in Iraq and global jihad in general.

A translation of the statement follows:

"A Statement of Condolence, Support, and Solace to Our Brothers and People in Nigeria

"Praise be to God. Peace be upon the Messenger of God, his household, his companions, and his followers.

"We witnessed with aggrieved hearts the massacre that befell our people and brothers in Nigeria a few days ago. This brutal crime and hideous revenge that was perpetrated against some 800 Muslims by destroying their mosque, bombing their hospital, razing their houses, and mutilating their bodies, by the rancorous Christian Nigerian army before the very eyes of the entire world that brags of humans rights and the false values of freedom and justice. God says: 'And they ill-treated them for no other reason than that they believed in Allah, Exalted in Power, Worthy of all Praise!' [Koranic verse, Al-Buruj, 85:8].

"The Christian minority which dominates the Muslim majority in Nigeria tried to justify its crime by promoting lies and tarring the image of our Salafi brothers and their supporters from the common Muslims. However, the scene of the innocent, completely unarmed, sick, women, and children who were killed, in addition to the scene of the caller and martyr Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf, may he rest in peace -- the barbaric torture being clear on his pure body after his arrest -- are all hard evidences which clearly indicate that it is a profligate and unjust Crusade led by the Christian minority in Nigeria against a majority that approaches 80 million Muslims under the slogan: 'Destroy Islam and annihilate its people.'

"The thing which upsets us is that this dreadful massacre will pass, while the 1 billion Muslim ummah is silent from the east to the west. At least we did not notice demonstrations or denunciations.

"Given this calamity afflicted our Muslim brothers in Nigeria at large and our Salafist, jihadist brothers in particular, led by martyr Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf, may he rest in peace, we can only console, announce loyalty to, and stand together with our brothers as a single hand against our enemies. We express our heartfelt condolences to the families of the martyrs and injured people. We ask God the Almighty to reward them plentifully for their patience in this calamity, to comfort them after it, and to relieve the families of the killed and injured people with patience and solace.

"We remind them that trial is the predestined law of God in his calls as He says: 'Alif Lam Mim. Do men think that they will be left alone on saying, "We believe," and that they will not be tested? We did test those before them, and Allah will certainly know those who are true from those who are false' [Koranic verses, Al-Ankabut, 29:1-3].

"We cannot miss advising our brothers and loved ones there to shun division and disagreement, as it is a priority to unify their ranks in order to stand against the infidels in one line as a cemented structure.

"We say to them that the blood of the martyr is light and fire. The blood of Shaykh Muhammad Yusuf and his martyr brothers will not be shed with impunity. That will furnish the course of Muslims in Nigeria with light, burn the worshipers of the cross, and water the tree of Islam in Nigeria in defiance of the infidels.

"O God, reward our brothers plentifully for their calamity, comfort them after it, and support them with patience and solace.

"O God, champion your Muslim servants in Nigeria over their enemies. Be with them and not against them. O God, accept them as martyrs, heal the injured among them, release their prisoners, and secure them. Praise and glory be to God. We bear witness that there is no other god but You. We seek your mercy and forgiveness.

"Al-Qa'ida Organization in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb"

[This item was originally filed as GMP20090820569008]

Nigeria: Police To Charge 97 Members of Islamic Sect to Court in Borno State

AFP20090821565001 Lagos Vanguard Online in English 21 Aug 09

[Report by Kingsley Omonobi: "Boko Haram: Police Dock 97 Sect Members; 24 Policemen Killed, 30 Missing in Borno Alone; Former Borno CP Moved to Force Hqtrs"]

In the aftermath of the Boko Haram attack in Maiduguri, Borno State in which hundreds of people were killed and property worth billions destroyed, the Police authorities have concluded arrangements to charge 97 members of the Islamic sect to court in Borno State today.

Indication to this effect emerged yesterday even as Commissioner of Police [CP], Ibrahim Abdul, formerly the CP, Police Air Wing, was yesterday appointed the new Borno State Police Commissioner. He takes over from Mr. Chris Dega who has been recalled to Force Headquarters, Abuja.

Vanguard gathered that the sect members who were responsible for the death of 24 police officers in Borno alone, while about 30 officers have been declared missing in action because their bodies were either burnt after killing them or buried in unknown locations, are to be charged for treason, arson and culpable homicide.

According to Police sources, charging the 97 members of the sect to court was in consonance with the rule of law policy of the Federal Government even though investigations have revealed that members of the sect are not only unrepentant of the massacre inflicted on 24 Police officers and Police stations, but agreed that most of the 30 others declared missing in action were either burnt to ashes or buried indiscriminately.

Noting that hundreds of the sect members had been relocated from their main camp to another place where eagle eyed security operatives are putting an eye on them, the source noted that even at the point of arrest and confinement, the sect members still say they are against Western education while the Nigerian constitution is not recognised by them because it is a Christian document.

[Description of Source: Lagos Vanguard Online in English -- Website of the independent daily; URL: http://www.vanguardngr.com]

Nigeria: Editorial Sees Recurrence of Religious Riots as Failure of Government

AFP20090821581009 Ibadan Nigerian Tribune Online in English 18 Aug 09

[Editorial: "Boko Haram: Matters Arising"]

Like other religious riots precipitated by Islamic fundamentalists in the North, the Boko Haram mayhem left death and destruction in its trail. Between 800 and 1,000 human lives were reported to have been wasted in the uprising. This last episode of religious onslaught had new dimensions -- the wide coverage area and the rapidity of its spread. Four states -- Bauchi, Borno, Yobe and Kano -- were engulfed in the disturbances that lasted a few days. Each time the Islamic fundamentalists strike, their primary targets are churches. This time round, the Boko Haram members extended their attacks to mosques and fellow Muslims.

President Umaru Yar'Adua has been effusively commended for ordering an investigation into the activities of the religious sect and the circumstances surrounding the death of its leader, Mohammed Yusuf. Before the outpouring of eulogies on the president for this initial step, Nigerians should impress it on him the need for a well-thought-out and frontal attack on the recurring problem of sectarian violence. This investigation, as the president said, should be nothing but a preliminary exercise, which should be followed immediately by a full-scale judicial inquiry. This is the only way to unravel the facts about the operations of the sect and the death of its leader.

Media investigations and information volunteered by different individuals have shown that this last orgy of religious turbulence was brought about by a combination of factors. It is already obvious that connivance or outright collusion on the part of people in authority was a contributory factor to this latest incident of mindless destruction of life and property.

It is now common knowledge that the leader of the sect had been arrested and charged to court in the past but security agents that should have gone to testify against him failed to show up. He was subsequently set free in spite of the mass of allegations against him. It has been made public that before the sect unleashed mayhem on the people, intelligence reports were made available by security agencies but nothing was done to nip it in the bud. It is already in the public domain that members of the sect had been flagrantly disobeying laws but were being left alone because of their connection with people in high places.

There have been allegations that top government officials were among the sect's sources of funding and that these officials had been giving cover to its members in their lawless conduct. It is already known that Mohammed Yusuf was not killed in a shoot-out. It has become crystal clear that his death was an incontrovertible case of extra-judicial execution. He was reported to have been arrested in a goat pen by a team of military men after which he was handed over to the police and later paraded before journalists. How could the question of a shoot-out have arisen? And what about the killing of Biji Foi, an alleged sponsor of the inimical group, who was a former commissioner in Borno State, and one of Yusuf's deputies? Was his killing also in a shoot-out?

The assignment of the investigative panel is thus simple and straight forward. The bulk of what it has to establish is already public knowledge. The central characters in the execution of the two men should be identified and asked to explain how men in police custody came by guns and developed extra hands to train the guns on their captors and engage them in a shoot-out. It is abundantly clear that key members of the sect were hurriedly eliminated to achieve a cover-up of vital facts that are badly needed to get to the root of the religious madness. The persistent recurrence of mass murder in the name of religion is attributable to nothing besides the failure of government to take decisive actions against the perpetrators of past episodes. Our expectation is that this will be different. And it can only be different if the president can muster the will to tackle the menace with the seriousness it deserves.

Before useful evidence begins to disappear, the government should inst itute a full-scale investigation that will yield information about the sect's formation, geographical spread, modus operandi, sources of funding and sources of other forms of support. There have been allegations that the sect's members have been rendering services to top political office holders as spiritual consultants. There have been stories that the sect has been in existence for the past 14 years during which it has been freely preaching religious bigotry and intolerance. These, along with others, are the allegations to be looked into as facts after which the characters involved should be made to face the full wrath of the law. Failure to do so will be an encouragement for a recurrence in no distant date. The country is today paying for the failure of past governments to deal with those involved in past cases of religious turbulence.

The president is reported to have engaged the services of international security consultants who are to join hands with the State Security Service (SSS) in mounting surveillance on crisis areas in the country. This, we believe, is a sheer waste of public funds. The SSS was reported to have filed a series of reports on the existence and activities of the Boko Haram sect. It was the failure of government to act on the reports that brought about the heavy toll in life and property. The international security experts will not provide more than intelligence reports. It is the sincerity of purpose and will to act on the part of the government that can put paid to the nefarious activities of religious fundamentalists.

The government should realise that the destructive acts of fanatical religious devotees put strains on the cord that binds the country together and diminish the country's estimation in the international community. This is why Yar'Adua should decisively deal with this situation. Pervasive unemployment and consequent poverty have created a large pool of idle hands and social malcoltents from which the likes of Mohammed Yusuf can always draw followers. This should be the Federal Government's area of primary attention, not the pursuit of cheap political points with any state government.

[Description of Source: Ibadan Nigerian Tribune Online in English -- Website of the privately owned daily; URL: http://www.tribune.com.ng]

Commentary Says Nigeria Needs To Establish Body To 'Screen' Religious Preachers

AFP20090821581016 Gamji.com in English 21 Aug 09