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

[Description of Source: Abuja Daily Trust Online in English -- Website of the independent pro-North daily; URL: http://www.news.dailytrust.com/]

Nigeria: Death Toll in Boko Haram Violence in Bauchi Increases To 52

AFP20090805614002 Abuja Cool FM in English 0545 GMT 04 Aug 09

Bauchi State police command yesterday said the death toll in 26 Jul Boko Haram sectarian crisis in the state has risen to 52.

The command’s public relations officer, Mohammed Barau, said 39 suspected members of the sect were initially killed during shoot out with the police.

He said 13 others who sustained serious injuries during the disturbances died in the course of treatment.

[Description of Source: Abuja Cool FM in English - privately owned, independent radio]

Nigeria: Killed Sect Leader Handed Over to Police Alive: Army

AFP20090805650001 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 1522 GMT 05 Aug 09

KANO, Nigeria, Aug 5, 2009 (AFP) - The Nigerian army insisted on Wednesday that it handed over Islamist sect leader Mohammed Yusuf alive to the police last week before he was killed under controversial circumstances.

Colonel Ben Ahonotu, the commander of the operation that led to Yusuf's capture in the northeastern city of Maiduguri last Thursday, said the sect leader was interrogated by a senior military officer before the handover.

"I personally arrested Yusuf and handed him over to the police after a short questioning the same day, only to be told that he died in a shootout," Ahonotu told AFP.

"A senior military officer conducted the interrogation of Mohammed Yusuf," he said without disclosing the identity of the army officer.

A video clip, almost six minutes long, widely believed to be that of Yusuf's interrogation before he was handed over to the police, is making the rounds on cellphones in some northern cities, an AFP reporter said.

During the questioning, a handcuffed Yusuf, who was standing naked from the waist up and surrounded by soldiers, reiterated his group's opposition to 'boko' or western education, which he said is a 'sin' (haram in Arabic/Hausa).

"All knowledge that contradicts Islam is prohibited by the Almighty. Sorcery or magic is knowledge but Allah has forbidden it. Polytheism is knowledge but Allah has forbidden it. Astronomy is knowledge, but Allah has forbidden it," he said in the video.

Ahonoto later said there was "no doubt" the clip was authentic, after its content was described in detail by an AFP correspondent over the telephone.

"From your description of the content of the clip it is no doubt authentic but I don't know how it leaked out to the public."

Police have denied that the Boko Haram sect leader was killed while in their custody, saying he died while trying to escape.

Yusuf, 39, was killed after security forces crushed an uprising last week by the self-styled Taliban fundamentalist group in several northern states of the Nigerian federation.

The violence left more than 800 people dead, the majority of them sect members.

President Umaru Yar'Adua on Tuesday ordered an investigation into the violence and Yusuf's killing.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay and rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called on the government to investigate the security forces' role in the violence.

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

Nigeria: Report Gives Instances Showing Yar'Adua's Loss of Control

AFP20090806619001 Lagos TheNews in English 03 Aug 09 - 10 Aug 09 pp 16-21, 23

[Report by Ademola Adegbamigbe: "A President Loses Control"]

President Umaru Yar’Adua manifests incompetence as captain of the Nigerian ship and it is all so apparent that he is losing control.

With the multiplicity of crises currently plaguing the country and sending his administration into confusion, President Umaru Yar’Adua could be likened to a factory hand manning the console of a brewery’s conveyor belt that has gone haywire. Just as the factory worker watches helplessly as bottles fly capriciously in different directions, Yar’Adua, in the view of most observers, has lost control of the button, string and lever of power, given the way violence follows mayhem across the country with dazzling frequency.

The President’s hands are, indeed, full: religious war in the North, the intractable Niger Delta problem, strikes all over local councils, the terrible power supply situation, poverty in the land and power play within his government. However, while there are people who believe that all these problems are self-inflicted because the President intrinsically lacks productive leadership qualities, other critics opine that Yar’Adua is a man of peace who cannot say boo to a goose.

The only trouble, according to the latter category, is that this ‘innocent’ Fulani man is being misadvised and pushed by fifth columnists within his government with the intention of making him look like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini rolled into one. In the end, according to observers, these hawks would push him over the cliff for them or their minions to assume power.

The concept of fifth columnists originated in 1936 when Emilio Mola, a rebel commander during the Spanish Civil War gave a speech on radio when his soldiers were marching on Madrid, the capital. He said that although their faces were made of four columns outside, he would conquer the city with the help of the "fifth column" of his supporters inside the city, who were "intent on undermining the Republican government from within". Political scientists have, since then, defined fifth columnists as "a group of people who undermine a larger group such as a nation from within to the aid of an external enemy."

In the history of Nigeria, the fifth columnist concept is believed to have led to the fall of many governments: Shehu Shagari who was overthrown by the military because of the austerity measures which his economic spin doctors waxed for him; General Muhammad Buhari, whose men, sometimes unknown to him, took actions that labeled his administration most inhuman; and Sani Abacha, who was driven into a state of schizophrenia by his advisers over insecurity complex.

In fact, Buhari, in an exclusive interview, revealed to TheNews (5 July 1993 edition) that in leadership you have to trust people. You have to give them jobs to handle and power to achieve goals. "But our administration was unlucky. There was a fifth columnist amongst us, and the success of that fifth columnist is what we are now in," the general lamented. According to him, there were certain people in the society who were embarrassed, that shouldn’t have been embarrassed because there was no reason for such embarrassment. One of them, according to Buhari, was Chief Obafemi Awolowo, whose house was ransacked by security people.

Buhari put it this way: "I didn’t know anything about the raid on his house. I ought to be told that the house of a person like Chief Awolowo was going to be searched. That should have been discussed at the Supreme Military Council. Alhaji Shehu Musa’s house was searched by some policemen. I got to know about these incidents after they had happened but I chose to keep quiet. I knew someone was playing games.

These incidents happened because the security had the right to such a level to quickly check on security issues. But then, it was later that I realized it was one of he master plans of the fifth columnist in my government to discredit me through embarrassing some leaders in certain localities without really any apparent reason to do so."

The regime of Buhari was so discredited for high-handedness that when General Ibrahim Babangida, the fifth columnist in Buhari’s government - he was Chief of Army Staff then snatched power, he was received with adulation to the nation’s peril later. Whether the President is on a self-destruct path or he is being led by the nose to his political stake, will remain a huge debate. But the premises for such conclusions are there for all to see.

Sectarian violence broke out on 26 July 2009 in Bauchi, leading to the death of hundreds of people. That was when security agencies clashed with an Islamic sect, the Boko Haram, who invaded the Busten Tanshi police state in Bauchi to seize weapons. The religious group was reported to be on the payroll of the Taliban of Afghanistan.

The group, numbering about 800, according to reports, wanted to wage a war using the arms it intended to confiscate against western values and education. But the warriors were resisted by security forces, which killed and arrested many of the invaders.

Within two days, the violence had spread to Kano and Borno States, leaving hundreds of people dead. The same sect attacked the police headquarters in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, resulting in the death of over 150 people. The group’s leader is one Mohammed Yusuf, a cleric. Yusuf’s men attacked the police armory, the Maiduguri new prison and the commander of the joint border patrol. The commander’s house, situated within the police headquarters, was razed by the fundamentalists.

Over 10 churches in Wulari, the police stations at Lamisula, Jere, Gomboru Kasuwan and Shanu were razed by the hoodlums. Among the dead were chief superintendent of police Mar Farrouk, deputy commander of the mobile police [MOPOL 6] at the Police College Training School, Maiduguri and another senior military officer. On 28 July 2009, when this magazine visited the Maiduguri police headquarters, it witnessed a jumble of corpses in the compound.

This magazine gathered that when intelligence reports first indicated a possible religious fracas in the state, the government allegedly ignored it. For the 10 hours that the Maiduguri clash lasted, economic activities were paralyzed. Abdulmumuni Ibrahim Mohammed, a secondary school certificate holder from Nasarawa State, said that the war was aimed at discouraging western education and the operation of the 1999 Constitution in Nigeria, a process which would give way to the application of the Sharia.

The Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone 12, Bauchi, Moses Anegbode, waved off the religious group as criminal gang. Last Tuesday, a joint military and police force bombed Yusuf’s house in the railway area of Maiduguri, leading to the death of his second in command, L Sakerau. About 180 women and their children, and Yusuf’s wives were transported from Bauchi to Maiduguri and kept in a house in the same area.

One of the women, Rashida, informed TheNews that their husbands told them that they were brought to Maiduguri for a religious crusade. The police were by last weekend still arranging to transport them back to Bauchi.

Anegbode told a national daily: "They forbid anything western, yet their leader has an array of western materials in his possession. He even uses phone and the SUVs, I wonder if they were made by him. They are notorious for kidnapping, raping, intimidation and molestation and known to be anti-establishment."

AK 47 rifles, 270 rounds of live ammunition, a single-barrel gun, three locally-made single-barrel guns, two locally-made revolver pistols, five rounds of 7.66 live ammunition, 500 rounds of 7.66 mm live ammunition, 21 live cartridges, two bags of lethal gunpowder used for making explosives, 200 detonators and over 1,000 locally fabricated plastic cylinders were seized from their enclave in Fadama Mada in Bauchi metropolis. The violence later spread to Yobe and Gombe states.

The Yar’Adua administration had been forewarned on this latest round of violence in the North. When violence erupted in Plateau and Bauchi States last year, Pastor Ladi Thompson, head of the Macedonian Initiative, a non-governmental organisation, warned of a grim fact that terrorists had slipped into Nigeria.

"The terrorists have infiltrated government and some elite in the government are members, hence these hoodlums have been able to enter the country and strike unchallenged," he told a national daily. He compared the situation to that of Sudan, "where terrorists operated in pockets of places until they finally took over the leadership of the country and legitimize it."

Many analysts have posited that the Bauchi mayhem was the handiwork of Islamic zealots who wish to bring down the government of Yar’Adua’s son-in-law and governor of the state, Isa Yuguda. His sin, as a source in the state said, was that the governor came to power with the overwhelming help of the Islamists "only for him to abandon the All Nigeria People Party and defect to the PDP."

The source drew the attention of this magazine to the failed attempt of the PDP to rig the election in 2007 when Yuguda contested on the ANPP platform. "And when the Islamists went on rampage, pulling down the Independent National Electoral Commission office in Bauchi, Obasanjo ordered that ANPP should be announced winner," he said.

As the radical woman politician, Najatu Mohammed, told this magazine, "People of Bauchi State fought tooth and nail for him to be there. A lot of people were killed in the process. But because Yuguda did not perform and he has betrayed the people, he decided to marry the daughter of the President and decamp to the PDP, where he believes that whether he wins or not, whether he performs or not or whether he squanders or not, his ticket and fate would be assured by the PDP under Yar’Adua."

Yar’Adua’s critics have attacked him for showing insensitivity to the hundreds of people that perished while he decided to travel to Brazil last Tuesday. One of them lamented: "What kind of President is this, behaving like Emperor Nero who fiddled away when Rome was on fire? Clearly, if one of his children was among the dead, he would not have travelled. Yet, he is expected to be the father of all Nigerians. That was exactly what President Shagari did when the Nigerian External Telecommunications building was on fire, he travelled out."

Another area where the President has lost control is in the Niger Delta, where the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, [MEND], headed by Henry Okah, has been waging a war for justice, development and a share of the proceeds of crude oil exploited from the littoral region.

Okah, who was arrested in 2007 and had been standing trial for treason and gun-running at the Federal High Court in Jos, was released last month after Michael Aondoakaa, the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, entered a nolle prosequi at the court, citing Section 174 of the 1999 Constitution which gives him power in such matters. With the ruling of Justice Mohammed Liman, the case came to an end.

But while government was still regaling on the possible peace mileage that Okah’s release would bring to the Niger Delta problem, MEND attacked the Atlas Cove depot of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation located in Takwa bay, Lagos, to drive home the message that the crisis was far from over.

A source blamed the attack on the attorney general who "did not act with dispatch when Yar’Adua, instructed him to release Okah. Rather, Aondoakaa decided to travel to Sao Tome and Principe. Thus, when MEND thought government was deceiving it, it attacked the Atlas Cove. Okah was released hours after that. Was the attorney general’s action deliberate?"

Yar’Adua has destabilized his own peace process in the Niger Delta through the attempt to site the Petroleum University in Kaduna, and the hanky panky over the Petroleum Bill, developments that have set the PDP South-south governors against the President. What is curious, according to observers is why a President would be dealing with amnesty on one hand and provoking the people of the region simultaneously.

The anger from the Niger Delta was expressed to the media last week in Lagos by Governors Liyel Imoke, Emmanuel Uduaghan, Godswill Akpabio and Rotimi Amaechi of Cross River, Edo, Akwa Ibom and Rivers States respectively. Imoke, who chaired the interactive session said: "For us, we believe in the amnesty initiative. It is imperative that for it to succeed, it must have a sustainable programme we must all key into. The consequence of failure is all too dire to imagine. We are not politicizing it. There is no alternative."

Uduaghan, who revealed that he was one of those who campaigned for amnesty, said he asked questions about what would happen after amnesty and the President said they were being worked out. When this was on, the Petroleum Bill, comprising two issues, came up: participation of the communities so that the people would take responsibility for protecting the facilities and that the people should be paid a percentage of the royalties. "In the old bill," Uduaghan explained, "they were there. But in the new one, they were left out. We thought all these would be part of the amnesty."

Akpabio argued that amnesty must not end with a six-month package because it is a long haul project. He maintained: "A militant cannot become a graduate within six months. If you bring money and they bring arms, it is forgotten and the boys may regroup." Akpabio, therefore, advocated a long plan that would look into human development (like education) for the youth.

Following this, as the governor revealed, was the movement of the university. The original plan by the Federal Executive Council in 2007 was that Petroleum Technology Institute in Effurun, Warri, would be upgraded to a university, for which the Delta State government had initially donated 250 million naira and the community provided a large expanse of land.

The Governor said that because of these developments, nobody could talk to the militants. "They boys will say, ‘where is our university? The amnesty will work after all these things are revisited." The four governors, therefore, vowed that despite their differences with regard to oil wells, they would stick together and fight the Niger Delta cause. A political scientist told this magazine that it is "as if a force is propelling Yar’Adua to self-destruct on the Niger Delta question."

The same force seems to be at work in the recent face-off between Governor Raji Fashola of Lagos State and President Yar’Adua. Indeed, it was Yar’Adua who stirred the hornets’ nest when he wrote a letter, dated 14 July 2009, to Fashola. Entitled: "RE: The Alteration of the Constitutionally Recognized Local Governments in Lagos State by the State Government and its Implication for Constitutionalism and National Unity."

The President referred to the continued existence and operation, within Lagos State of 37 Local Government Development Areas, [LCDA], created by the Lagos State Government out of the 20 constitutionally-recognized Local Government Areas listed in the First Schedule of the 1999 Constitution.

He added: "I am aware that on the 11th October 2008, the Lagos State Government, against the express advice of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, conducted Local Government elections into 57 instead of 20 local government Councils within the state. Information available to me indicates that the said 57 Local Councils have continued to function as if they were validly created under the 1999 Constitution."

He reminded Fashola of the verdict of the Supreme Court in 2004, in the matter of AG of Lagos Vs AG of the Federation (2004) 20 NSCQLR, 1999, that the process of creating Local Government Councils by any state legislature remains incomplete until the National Assembly passes the consequential order amending Section 3, sub-section 6 and Part One of the First Schedule to the Constitution.

"I am not aware that the National Assembly has taken the step to regularize the creation of an additional 37 ‘Local Councils’ in Lagos State. In law and logic therefore, these councils remain unknown to the 1999 Constitution and to all intents and purposes are illegal administrative entities."

He further accused Fashola of disregarding the judgment of the High Court of Lagos State in Chief Taiwo Joseph Tovi-Hungeva and Abraham O. Ogabi and Four Others, delivered on 9 June 2008, which followed a Supreme Court judgment invalidating the continued functioning of the 37 LCDA. "I am particularly worried by the fact that disbursements from the Federation Account meant for the disbursement to the 20 constitutionally recognized councils are now being diverted to the funding of additional 37 illegal entities, under the direction and control of functionaries who have no legal basis for occupying their present office," Yar’Adua charged.

The President asked Fashola to revert the local government structures in Lagos State to the Local Government Councils recognized in the First Schedule of the 1999 Constitution within 14 days of the date of the letter. With a threat, the President concluded: "May I add that if the Lagos State government persists in breach of the Constitution in respect of this matter beyond the asserted 14 days, I shall be compelled to direct that necessary action is taken by the relevant organs of State to defend the Constitution and preserve the authority of the Federal Government."

In his 17 July 2009 reply, Fashola asked the President, an advocate of the rule of law, to seek the intervention of the judiciary, rather than his saber-rattling approach to the matter. The Lagos Governor cited the 1999 Constitution, which s very clear on the principle of separation of powers and reminded the President of the judgment of the Supreme Court on the matter. Fashola said that the President’s directive to shut down the 37 councils is not possible since they were created after valid laws were made by the Lagos State House of Assembly.

"In a constitutional democracy, the Federal Government does not enjoy the prerogative of compelling a state entity to conform to its will however well conceived except where that will conforms to the law," Fashola told Yar’Adua.

Citing two of the laws that led to the creation of the 37 councils – the Creation of Local Government Areas Law No.5 2002 and the Creation of Local Government Areas (Amendment) Law 2004 – he further quoted from the judgment of the Supreme Court: "If the Federal Government felt aggrieved by Lagos State creating more local government, the best solution is to seek redress in a court of law, without resorting to self-help. In a society where the rule of law prevails, self help is not available to the Executive or any arm of government."

The Governor expressed his disappointment that at this time "when our economy is challenged and our people are expectant and looking up to us for leadership and direction, our country can do without a political crisis over a matter which constitutionally and demonstrably constitutes no threat to the nation."

But why did Yar’Adua decide to revisit a crisis which he helped to resolve when he released the remaining funds which his predecessor, Obasanjo, sat on? Observers have raised many explanations about why Yar’Adua who had a chummy relationship with Fashola has suddenly become bellicose.

One belief is that certain ambitious elements in the Lagos State PDP, bent on capturing the state in the 2011 election, have been poisoning Yar’Adua’s faith in and close relationship with Fashola. Such elements may have been succeeding because of what many analysts believe is the President’s own weak constitution. Early in Fashola’s tenure, he struck a good relationship with Yar’Adua to the extent that the President did not only release Lagos State’s local government funds that his predecessor withheld, but he was also readily approving and, in fact, collaborating on the Governor’s projects, like the expansion of the Badagry expressway.

He also included Fashola in his economic management team and would always readily give him a listening ear on federal projects like the Apap-Oshodi expressway and Airport road, all in Lagos State. That Yar’Adua is suddenly doing a volte-face on Fashola, posited Umar Yahaya, a social crusader, shows that the President is infirm of resolve and can be easily manipulated. Such a leader, Yahaya scoffed, will find it difficult to hold together a sensitive country like Nigeria.