NIGERIA

Reports on Ethnic Relations  /  Rapports sur les relations éthniques

The following section is consisted of part, full or summaries of articles from diverses sources (newspapers, newsletters, etc...).
La section suivante est constituée d'exraits, de la totalité ou de résumés d'articles provenant d'origines diverses (journaux,bulletins, etc..).

08 / 27 / 2003 

IRIN

"Appeal court to rule on Lawal death sentence in September"

An Islamic appeal court in northern Nigeria said on Wednesday it would rule on 25 September whether a young mother sentenced to death by stoning for adultery should be executed.

Amina Lawal, 32, was sentenced to death by a lower Shari'ah or Islamic court in March last year after she had a baby out of wedlock. She was convicted under the strict religious penal code adopted by a dozen states in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north over the past four years.

The lower court ruled that Lawal should be stoned to death after she had weaned her baby, which is now 20 months old. The man who she said was responsible for making her pregnant was acquitted after he swore by the Koran that it was not him.

The death sentence was confirmed by an upper Shari'ah court in August 2002, prompting an appeal to Katsina state's highest appeal court.

The case has caused global outrage, with human rights and women activists launching a worldwide campaign to save Lawal's life.

After several postponements, Lawal's appeal was concluded before the Katsina Shari'ah Court of Appeal on Wednesday.

"This case has been prolonged," presiding judge or Grand Khadi Aminu Ibrahim, said as the defence and prosecution readied their arguments in the court room, which was packed with foreign and Nigerian journalists. "It is not good to keep her in suspense for so long."

Making the case for Lawal's acquittal, Aliyu Musa Yawuri, the chief defence lawyer, argued that she became pregnant before Shari'ah law came into force in Katsina state. He also pointed out that the court which originally convicted her did not explain her offence and the likely penalty for it before she was said to have confessed.

The defence further argued that under Islamic law some pregnancies could take five years to gestate. This meant that Lawal's baby might technically have been created by her former husband, from whom she became divorced two years earlier.

Mohammed Darma, the lead prosecuting lawyer, insisted as the prosecution had always done in this case, that the fact the Lawal was divorced when she became pregnant was adequate evidence of her guilt.

Whatever ruling is given on 25 September could still be challenged by either the defence or the prosecution at the Federal Court of Appeal, and in the last resort at the Supreme Court.

Lawal is one of five people who have been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery by Islamic courts in northern Nigeria in the past three years.

Safiya Husseini Tunga Dudu, who also had a baby out of wedlock, was finally acquitted on 19 March last year, the same day that Lawal received her sentence.

Sarimu Mohammed Baranda, a 54-year-old man sentenced to death for raping a nine-year-old, girl was reprieved on appeal last week after pleading insanity.

A couple in Niger State is also appealing against a death sentence handed down for adultery.

President Olusegun Obasanjo's government has condemned the application of Sharia'h punishments on the grounds that they contravene Nigeria's constitution. It has said that it will not allow stoning sentences to be carried out.

However, the government says it is constrained to intervene at the present stage by the country's federal structure, under which the 36 states have the autonomy to enact their own laws.

The introduction of strict Sharia'h law has increased tensions between the country's Muslim north and Chrisitian-dominated south, leading to outbreaks of sectarian violence in which thousands of people have died.

08 / 26 / 2003 

IRIN

"Fighting between rival villages claims more lives in Delta"

Several people were killed at the weekend when gunmen in speed boats raided a village in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta oil region, burning houses and firing weapons, residents and police said.

Police and local residents blamed the attack on the Ijaw village of Ekeremor in Bayelsa State on Saturday on men from two other Ijaw villages in neighbouring Delta State.

"The miscreants who I understand came from Ogbodobiri and Oboro communities killed about six people," Oliver Osuchukwu, the police commander of Bayelsa State, told IRIN.

Several Nigerian newspapers quoted residents of the affected village as saying the death toll was between 10 and 20.

Osuchukwu said the police had launched an investigation into the cause of the violence. Meanwhile, contingents of police and soldiers had been deployed in the area to ward off any further attacks.

Newspapers quoted survivors as saying the remote swamp village was attacked by youths from nearby Ogbodobiri and Oboro who were angered by the killing of three men from their own communities in Ekeremor two weeks ago. They had been suspected of involvement in pirate attacks on local boats.

Five days of violence between rival militias of the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups last week killed at least 100 people in the oil port city of Warri, a hub of oil operations in the Niger Delta.

In this case however, the violence reflected a dispute between different Ijaw communities. Violence, sometimes between rival communities and ethnic groups or just aimed at disrupting oil multinationals' operations, is rife in Nigeria's delta region where most of the country's oil is produced.

Locals fight each other mostly over claims to shares of the region's oil wealth. Activists and community groups have accused successive Nigerian governments of colluding with oil companies to deny poor villages a share in the region's oil wealth.

08 / 22 / 2003 

IRIN

"100 die in Delta fighting, Red Cross says"

The Nigerian Red Cross said on Friday about 100 people were killed in five days of ethnic violence that rocked the southern oil city of Warri.

The federal government meanwhile set up a task force protect oil wells in the area and crack down on the massive theft of crude oil from pipelines.

The shadowy figures behind this racket are widely believed to have flooded the Niger Delta with sophisticated weaponry that used by the tribal gangs to attack each other and the government's security forces.

Fighting erupted between rival militias of the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups on 15 August, defying a night curfew declared by the Delta State government. Gangs of armed youths armed with automatic rifles engaged each other in a series of gun battles.

Calm returned to the city on 20 August as troop reinforcements arrived. The Delta State government said it had persuaded the warring groups to agree a truce.

"With calm now returning to the city we are beginning to see the extent of the damage and have reason to believe close to 100 people died," Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Red Cross told IRIN.

He said more than 1,000 people had been treated by the Red Cross, mostly for minor injuries, while more than 4,000 had been displaced from their homes.

President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday he had set up a special military task force to pacify the volatile oil-producing region.

Its primary task will be to secure oil installations and stop criminals from stealing crude from pipelines for sale in the international market.

This ilicit trade in stolen oil is believed to be the source of funds for guns which are now awash in the Niger Delta, said Colonel Ganiyu Adewale, the defence ministry spokesman.

"The task force will do anything we believe is necessary to stop the violence," he told IRIN.

Delta State Governor James Ibori met with leaders of the Ijaw and Itsekiri communities on Friday to firm up the truce agreed earlier in the week. But leaders of the militant Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC) refused to attend the meeting, saying they doubted the governor's neutrality.

Bello Oboko, president of FNDIC told IRIN the latest fighting in Warri was sparked-off by Ibori's order for Ijaws to quit the MacIver area of the city. This is claimed by Itsekiris.

"Ibori cannot broker any peace agreement that will be binding on the Ijaws," he told IRIN.

At the heart of the violence are claims and counter-claims to the ownership of oil-rich land in a region whose inhabitants are still mostly dirt poor.

The individuals and communities who control the land mop up the many benefits that can be extracted from the oil companies whose wells have been drilled there.

Fighting between Ijaws and Itsekiris in March left at least 100 people dead and forced oil companies operating in the swamps of the Niger Delta to shut down facilities that produce 40 percent of Nigeria's oil exports.

Ijaws accuse Obasanjo's government of favouring the Itsekiris, giving them the best of government patronage and most of the few amenities given to the impoverished region.

08 / 21 / 2003 

IRIN

"Questions raised over Taylor's exile in Nigeria"

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

While former Liberian President Charles Taylor has taken up life in exile in a serene, luxurious home overlooking a river in Nigeria's southeastern city of Calabar, the dust raised by the asylum granted the suspected war criminal is yet to settle.

The United Nations-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone, which indicted Taylor on 4 June for crimes against humanity over his alleged support for a brutal rebel movement in that country, insists the charges against the former warlord will stand for life. Nigeria, the court's special prosecutor David Crane has said, is obliged under international law to hand him over to the court's custody.

International human rights groups have also stepped up their campaign to have Taylor tried for his alleged crimes. Both New York-based Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International are mounting pressure on Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo to hand Taylor over to the court in Sierra Leone.

"The UN Security Council has called on all states to cooperate with the Sierra Leone Special Court," said Rory Mungoven, the global advocacy director of HRW said in a recent statement. "Nigeria must not reject the Security Council's request by harbouring an indicted war criminal."

Amnesty International argues that Nigeria being a signatory to the Rome Statute setting up the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other pertinent international treaties is bound to give up Taylor for trial.

"The Nigerian government must arrest Charles Taylor and either surrender him to the Special Court or open an investigation with a view to determining whether to open criminal or extradition proceedings in Nigerian courts," Amnesty International said.

In Nigeria there has been a raging debate over the merits and demerits of having Taylor in the country. Obasanjo's government has been the butt of criticisms by local human rights groups and Nigerians upset by the decision to provide shelter for a wanted man.

The umbrella journalists union in Nigeria has taken the extra step of mounting a legal challenge to Taylor's asylum in court. Among the demands of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) is that Taylor be tried for the murder of two Nigerian journalists he admitted was the responsibility of his then rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia in the early 1990s while he was leading an insurrection against the government of late Samuel Doe.

In addition the union wants Taylor extradited to Sierra Leone to face war crime charges.

"Apart from the fact that he killed two Nigerian journalists, he was indicted for war crimes and Nigeria can't afford to go against the position of the UN," Smart Adeyemi, president of the NUJ, told IRIN. "You don't harbour a murderer in your house, it's against the Nigerian constitution," he added.

Yet Nigeria has remained adamant it will not give up the man who presided over the past 14 years of almost incessant conflict in Liberia and was accused of exporting instability across the West Africa.

Right from the time Obasanjo made his early July trip to Monrovia to make the asylum offer to Taylor, he had stressed it was a necessary step to end the bloodbath in Africa's oldest republic and would brook no pressures to hand him in.

His foreign minister Oluyemi Adeniji, a former UN diplomat, has since Taylor's arrival restated the government position more bluntly. "Nigeria will not be harassed by anybody about the indictment, and that is final," Adeniji told reporters in Abuja last week.

"You give somebody asylum on humanitarian grounds in order to save the Liberian people from fighting, in order to save the peace process... and three days later you hand him over to somebody else? That is not what a sovereign country would do," he said.

Adeniji said Nigeria was unlikely to come under such pressures from the United States as some commentators had suggested because the world's only superpower understood why political refuge was given Taylor.

Nigerian foreign ministry officials say privately the need to take in Taylor formed part of the discussions between Obasanjo and President George Bush during the Nigerian stop of his African visit.

Leaked official documents on Taylor indicate he has been given very stringent conditions for his stay in Nigeria to ensure he does not continue to foment trouble at home from his exile. Not only is Taylor required to travel out of Calabar only with the permission of his hosts, he is also barred from commenting on Liberian affairs and can only grant interviews with the permission of the Nigerian government.

Neither the former Liberian president nor members of his family will enjoy any immunities or special privileges while in Nigeria. In particular no form of arms or ammunition must be found in his possession or that of any member of his entourage. Taylor is also expected to meet all his expenses.

Despite the apparent domestication of the former warlord by Nigeria for the benefit of Liberia, Obasanjo's critics question his motives. Tajudeen Abdulraheem, who heads the London-based rights group, Justice Africa, believes Obasanjo is working in cahoots with United States to undermine the ICC, where the Bush administration does not want United States citizens tried.

Abdulraheem recalled that Obasanjo had on two occasions in the past four years ordered troops into action in conflict areas in Nigeria where they committed atrocities against unarmed civilians for which no one has been brought to account.

In each case, in the ethnic Ijaw town of Odi in the southern Niger Delta in 1999 and in Tiv town of Zaki Biam in central Nigeria in 2001, hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred by troops.

Abdulraheem alleged Obasanjo's decision to sign an immunity pact over ICC trials with the United States may have been done in the hope that allegations of crimes against humanity against him may also be overlooked.

Nigerian senator and leading Obasanjo critic, Joseph Waku, who is also a Tiv, amplifies this view. "I can't see Obasanjo handing over Charles Taylor for trial because he himself is awaiting trial over the Tiv genocide," he told reporters recently.

However, Bola Akinterinwa, a professor and researcher at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, believes the priority for the government was ending the bloody conflict in Liberia and preventing it from infecting the rest of the West Africa region.

"There is wisdom in overlooking the atrocities of Taylor by giving him Nigerian hospitality and putting a stop to the carnage in Liberia," Akinterinwa said in a recent newspaper article.

"It is important to distinguish between the need to ensure regional peace and the need to punish Taylor for his roles in regional instability. The purpose of the asylum, which is to ensure restoration of peace, its maintenance and sustenance, is the priority," he said.

"Delta militants agree to end fighting, says governor"

Rival ethnic militias have agreed to end fighting after days of bloody clashes in Nigeria's southern oil city of Warri in which dozens of people died, the local Delta State governor said on Thursday.

Governor James Ibori, who cut short his annual vacation abroad to deal with the crisis, said he called a meeting of leaders of the rival Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups and impressed on them the need to put an immediate stop to the fighting.

"What I have done is to appeal to their conscience that we're all going to be losers in this game if Warri is destroyed," he told reporters.

Fighting broke out in the city which is a major centre for oil transnationals operating in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta on Friday and continued for the next four days despite a night curfew imposed by the authorities.

Witnesses said more than 45 people were killed as Ijaw and Itsekiri youths armed with automatic weapons battled each other on the streets and set buildings ablaze despite the deployment of soldiers and policemen.

More army and police reinforcements were sent into the city on Tuesday to create a buffer between the warring sides, said Nigeria's defence spokesman Col. Ganiyu Adewale. No new clashes have been reported between the two groups since then.

However, leaders of the militias said on Thursday they had not been party to the meeting with the governor where a ceasefire was agreed, but pledged to respect it.

"We were not privy to that meeting but we will not attack anyone if we are not attacked," Ijaw youth leader Dan Ekpebide told IRIN.

"We are prepared to abide by the peace accord provided the Ijaws will do likewise," said Matthew Tsekure, his Itsekiri counterpart.

At the heart of the violence are claims and counter-claims to the ownership of the oil-rich land. The individuals and communities who control the land mop up the many benefits that can be extracted from the oil companies whose wells have been drilled there.

Fighting between Ijaws and Itsekiris in March left at least 100 people dead and forced oil transationals operating in the area to shut down facilities producing 40 percent of Nigeria's daily export of two million barrels.

Ijaws accuse Obasanjo's government of abetting an Itsekiri ascendancy over their neighbours, giving them the best of government patronage and most of the few amenities that come to the impoverished region.

08 / 19 / 2003 

IRIN

"Death toll mounts in delta violence"

At least 45 people had died by Tuesday as the death toll increased in four days of gun battles between rival ethnic militias in Nigeria's southern oil city of Warri, witnesses said. Oil transnationals operating in the area had shut their offices.

More than 40 houses were burnt and thousands left homeless as fighting, which broke out on Friday night between Ijaw and Itsekiri militias armed with automatic weapons, persisted despite a night curfew imposed by the Delta State government.

Twenty people were reported killed by witnesses in the first two days of fighting. Ijaw militants said 39 of their people were killed by troops deployed by President Olusegun Obasanjo's government to quell the violence.

"The 39 people include women and children and 16 men killed in cold blood by soldiers," Bello Oboko, an Ijaw militant leader told IRIN on Tuesday. His claims could not be confirmed by independent sources.

But Colonel Gar Dogo, commander of the 6th Amphibious Battalion of the Nigerian army, deployed to end the violence denied that his troops had killed innocent people. "It is not true we have killed any Ijaw people, my soldiers have been very restrained and we have no reason to take sides against Ijaws," he told IRIN.

Bawo Omatsola, an Itsekiri resident, said more than 15 people were killed during attacks launched by Ijaws on their settlements on Sunday and the early hours of Monday. He said many people were still missing and may have died.

Oil transnationals which use Warri as a key base for operations in the western Niger Delta asked their employees to stay away from their offices to avoid being caught in the crossfire. But both Royal/Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco, which have big operations in the area, said their production and exports have yet to be affected by the violence.

"We have asked people to stay home but our field operations are still going on," a Shell spokesman told IRIN.

A ChevronTexaco official said employees "had "been advised to stay at home" but added the company's oil export schedules were continuing unhindered so far.

Colonel Ganiyu Adewale, the armed forces spokesman, said more troops were being deployed to the troubled city to create "a buffer zone" between the warring militias and added that the situation was now under control.

"Normally in such a situation there must be casualties but I can't give anything in terms of numbers," he said in response to a question about death toll.

Warri, a sprawling city of one million people set amid the swamps of the Niger delta, is a major oil base for companies that pump the crude oil that is the lifeline of the Nigerian economy from nearby oil platforms.

Fighting between Ijaws and Itsekiris in March left at least 100 people dead and forced oil transationals operating in the area to shut down facilities producing 40 percent of Nigeria's daily export of two million barrels.

At the heart of the violence are claims and counter-claims to the ownership of the oil-rich land. The individuals and communities who control the land mop up the many benefits that can be extracted from the oil companies whose wells have been drilled there.

Ijaws accuse Obasanjo's government of abetting an Itsekiri ascendancy over their neighbours, giving them the best of government patronage and most of the few amenities that come to the impoverished region.

"Shariah court overturns stoning death verdict for rape"

An Islamic appeal court in the northern Nigerian state of Jigawa on Tuesday overturned a sentence of death by stoning passed on a convicted rapist and ordered him sent instead to a home for the mentally ill.

Sarimu Mohammed Baranda, 54, was convicted of raping a nine-year-old girl by a lower Shariah court in May last year. But his family launched a last-minute legal challenge just before the mandatory appeal period lapsed, pleading he was mentally ill.

Baranda subsequently told the appeal court the confession that was the basis of his conviction was obtained under torture by the police. He also said he was not aware at the time death was the punishment for the offence for which he was charged.

The four-member appeal panel sitting in Dutse, the Jigawa State capital, accepted his appeal.

"Having reviewed all the arguments in this case, we have suspended the guilty verdict earlier passed by the lower court," said presiding judge Isa Inua Ali, as he read the unanimous judgment of the court.

Baranda was to be committed to the mental institution, 80 kilometres north of Dutse until such a time the state governor ordered his release, the judgment said.

Defence counsel, Mohammed Gausu, told reporters outside the court he was pleased with the judgment. But the state prosecutor, Muktari Abdullahi, said he would await instructions from the state government if to challenge the ruling in the federal appeal court  the next appeal stage.

Baranda said he was pleased to be free from the death sentence, but said he would prefer to be sent home where he could still receive treatment for his mental illness instead of a psychiatric hospital.

Apart from Baranda, three other people are also pursuing appeals against death by stoning sentences passed on them by Shariah courts for adultery in parts of predominantly Muslim northern Nigeria, where 12 states have adopted the strict Islamic legal code in the past four years.

The case of Amina Lawal, a 32-year-old mother sentenced to death for having a child out of marriage, has drawn worldwide condemnation from human rights activists. A couple in Niger State is also appealing a similar sentence.

The introduction of Shariah law has sharply divided multi-ethnic Nigeria's 120 million population along religious lines, reinforcing mutual suspicion between the largely Christian or animist south and the Muslim north. Thousands of people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence linked to tension from the application of Shariah law.

08 / 18 / 2003 

IRIN

"Renewed ethnic clashes kill 20 in southern oil town"

A new outbreak of ethnic fighting has left at least 20 people dead in Nigeria's southern oil city of Warri, residents and police said on Sunday.

The violence broke out on Friday night in the MaCiver area of the city and continued overnight as ethnic Ijaw and Itsekiri militias armed with automatic weapons exchanged fire on the streets.

The lull which followed the heavy deployment of security forces in armoured tanks and the imposition of a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Saturday, was shattered in the early hours of Sunday as fresh gun battles erupted. By Sunday afternoon the fighting had intensified despite the heavy security presence, residents said.

"By Saturday afternoon I had counted no less than 20 bodies on the streets," Tuoyo Ine, a Warri resident, told IRIN. "With the latest violence the figures can only go up."

Joseph Abiona, the police commander in charge of Warri, confirmed the latest eruption of violence in the troubled town but refused to give any details. "It's the usual Ijaw/Itsekiri trouble and we're trying to deal with it," he said.

Warri, a sprawling city of one million people set amid the swamps of the Niger delta, is a major base for the oil companies that pump the crude oil that is the lifeline of the Nigerian economy from nearby oil platforms.

Fighting between Ijaws and Itsekiris in March had left at least 100 people dead and forced oil transationals operating in the area to shut down facilities producing 40 percent of Nigeria's daily export of two million barrels.

At the heart of the violence are claims and counter-claims to the ownership of oil-rich land. The individuals and communities who control the land mop up the many benefits that can be extracted from the oil companies whose wells have been drilled there.

Ijaws accuse President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of abetting an Itsekiri ascendancy over their neighbours, giving them the best of government patronage and most of the few amenities that come to the impoverished region.

There is also deep-rooted resentment against the foreign oil companies, perceived as filling the government coffers with petro-dollars and repatriating fat profits to their shareholders while leaving the inhabitants of the delta in miserable poverty.

08 / 14 / 2003 

IRIN

"Nigeria/Benin: Obasanjo, Kerekou agree to reopen frontier"

Nigeria and Benin agreed on Thursday night to reopen their border which Nigeria closed unilaterally six days ago in protest at Benin's failure to curb smuggling and banditry.

An official communique issued at the end of a summit meeting between President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Mathieu Kerekou of Benin in the Nigerian border town of Badagry said the 733 km long border would reopen on Friday morning.

It said the two heads of state had agreed to set up more effective joint police border patrols and strengthen the implementation of an extradition treaty between Nigeria and Benin.

Nigeria closed the border last Saturday on the grounds that cross-border raids by criminals allegedly based in Benin and the trafficking of women and children was threatening security, while the rampant smuggling of fuel and other goods was undermining its economy.

The oil-rich country of 120 million people accused its smaller neighbour with a population of just seven million of doing little to stop robbers alleged to have stolen more than 2,300 posh cars from Nigeria over the past three years for resale in Benin.

The border closure has hurt regional trade along the West African coast as far as Ghana.

Obasanjo said before going into the summit meeting with Kerekou: "The most important point is that the criminals in our midst should know that their end has come." He added: "If we can achieve that then we've achieved something for the rest of Africa."

Kerekou acknowledged that there were too many criminal activities on the border between the two countries and pledged to cooperate with Nigeria to curb them.

08 / 10 / 2003 

IRIN

"Nigeria/Benin: Border closed to curb banditry and smuggling"

Nigeria closed its western border with Benin on Sunday and said it would remain shut until the Beninois government took tougher action against rampant smuggling and banditry along the 700 km-long frontier.

Thousands of travellers were stranded at the main border crossing at Seme, 60 km west of Lagos, after President Olusegun Obasanjo's government ordered the border gates to be shut. However, eyewitnesses said cars with diplomatic plates were still being allowed through.

Nigeria's surprise action effectively cut the main highway along the coast of West Africa that is used to exchange goods between countries as far apart as Cote d'Ivoire and Cameroon.

The Nigerian foreign ministry said in a statement the border would remain closed until Benin's President Mathieu Kerekou took firmer action against smuggling and banditry.

For years cars stolen in Nigeria have turned up on sale in Benin and large quantities of cheap Nigerian petrol have been smuggled across the border.

At the same time, human trafficking has become rife in both directions. Nigerians seeking clandestine entry to Europe often leave via Benin, while West African children, recruited to work for low wages on plantations in Central Africa are dispatched in the opposite direction.

In the past many complaints were made to the Beninois authorities, but failed to elicit the appropriate and satisfactory response, the Nigerian foreign ministry said. The decision to close our border with Benin Republic was therefore taken in Nigeria's overriding national interest.

Long queues of vehicles formed on each side of the border after barriers went down, leaving travellers uncertain about how they would get home.

I went to buy goods in Lagos for my business in Cotonou and now I'm stranded, I don't know what to do, Prosper Hunpounou, a Beninois businessman, told IRIN.

The move by Nigeria may contravene its treaty obligations as a member of the Eonomic Community of West African States. The organisation's 15 member countries have pledged to allow the free movement of people and goods between them.

Although rising crime was cited as Nigeria's reason for sealing the border with Benin, commercial issues may also have played a role in the move.

In recent years, Nigerian officials have expressed concern at the huge volume of cargo traffic which has shifted from the port of Lagos, which is bedevilled by shipping delays, high port charges and corruption, to the more efficient port of Cotonou in Benin. From there, the goods are then trucked overland into Nigeria.

They fear that the transfer in freight movements has led to big losses in port and customs revenues for Nigeria.

08 / 01 / 2003 

IRIN

"Oil thieves siphon 300,000 barrels daily, says governor"

Nigeria is losing 300,000 barrels of crude oil daily to oil thieves siphoning the product from pipelines in the Niger Delta oil for sale in the international market, a top official has said.

James Ibori, governor of worst-hit Delta State, told reporters after a security meeting on the matter between Nigeria's 36 state governors and President Olusegun Obasanjo on Thursday, that Nigeria was losing US $3.5 billion yearly to the illegal activity carried out by highly organised criminal gangs.

Oil transnationals had in the past given 200,000 barrels per day as the estimated volume of crude oil lost through what is known locally as "bunkering". But officials of Nigeria's petroleum ministry said the latest figures given by Ibori included losses from domestic distribution of refined products after pipelines are broken into by the oil thieves.

Such tampering with fuel pipelines have been blamed for several incidents of massive fires which have engulfed and killed people scavenging fuel from such sites, claiming more than 2,000 victims in the past five years.

Ibori said investigations launched by the security agencies have identified some unnamed individuals and countries involved in the trade as sellers and recipients respectively of illegally procured crude oil and refined products. He said the government was going to deal with the problem from both "the sellers and users point of view".

Oil industry sources said those involved in the syndicates siphoning crude oil from pipelines were highly skilled, with considerable knowledge and experience of highly technical oil operations. "Some of them are people who had worked in the industry or are still working in it," an official of oil giant Royal/Dutch Shell, which pumps about half of Nigerias two million barrels daily output and has reported losing 100,000 barrels a day, told IRIN.

Other sources said the gangs involved often work in connivance with security agencies and top ranking navy officers, who arrange to escort the barges used in collecting crude oil to larger vessels and tankers waiting offshore. Among the destinations are refineries on the West African coast as well as buyers in the energy spot markets, they said.

In June Obasanjo's government increased fuel prices, citing among his reasons the need to discourage smuggling of Nigerian fuel to neighbouring countries where prices are much higher. Obasanjo also said he needed to save about US $2 billion expended annually as fuel subsidy for investment in social services.

Critics have accused his government of not doing enough to tackle the corruption, including the smuggling of petroleum and its by-products, in the oil industry in order to make even bigger savings.

"The government ignores concrete allegations of massive smuggling of crude oil and corruption surrounding the management of crude meant for domestic consumption," the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights group said in a statement on Friday. "Yet, blocking this leakage will generate more funds for development than the punitive tax imposed on Nigerians."