Nigeria declares state emergency

Nigeria's leader has declared a state of emergency in Plateau State, where hundreds have died in communal clashes.

President Olusegun Obasanjo said there was a "near mutual genocide" in the central state, where rival groups started fighting over land and cattle.

Hundreds of Muslims were killed by Christian militants in the town of Yelwa earlier this month. In February, 49 Christians were killed in a church.

Tensions have also spread to other cities in Nigeria.

Nigeria declares state emergency....

Several leading Nigerians have reacted nervously to President Olusegun Obasanjo's declaration of a state of emergency in Plateau State.

They fear the impact that the decree will have on democracy in the country.

But some have welcomed the decision, feeling it is the only way to restore peace to the region.

Just, "STOP IT!!!"

Humanity was given two incredible gifts,...to be self-aware and to be master of the material world.

What a waste of such gifts.

Humanity chooses whether to be a disease or an ointment.

,...*sigh*,....

is acting as ointment or disease. It may that cooler heads are prevailing and he's doing the right thing vis-a-vis the conflicts on the Plateua. Then it's bad timing, with e.g. Soyinka calling for wider protests and denouncing him as a civilian dictator.

Beats me, though.

unless islam is moderated. People need to start embracing feminism and women's reproductive rights without limits and work for freeing muslim women from oppression unless european nations want to live in a perpetual state of siege. Here we need to fight the christian right at every pass because they just ad fuel to the fire at every interlude.

Africa is being raped for the oil and minerials. The mutual genocide is being fueled by "outside" forces.

that while outside forces desire for the oil and minerals is related to this, but the outside forces don't care who they have to deal with to get it. This is several internal factions using the guise of religion to try to control those resources.

The cause, therefore, was not religious, but because the riots pitted Muslim against Christian, they had the appearance of being so.




At their root, these differences are not cultural or religious. They are economic. The tragedy of Nigeria is that over the past few decades its population has grown rapidly, but despite the country's vast oil wealth, the economy has failed to keep pace.




And along with this, the failure of the state to provide adequate education for the vast majority of the population, has produced a frustrated and angry underclass of largely urban, unemployed youths.



It is a cycle that is difficult to break, particularly if it is repeatedly nudged over the edge by the politicians, or even external influences.
Take for example, the riots in the northern city of Kano in October 2001. That began after a peaceful anti-US demonstration by local Muslims, angry at the bombing of Afghanistan. It quickly degenerated however into a violent inter-faith battle, most probably stoked up by local political rivalries.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1630089.stm

These photos could have been taken in Haiti





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They are inside forces that are completely opposed to the interest of the people.

Creating wealth for the people would mean less wealth for the oil companies.

The oil companies do not want Nigeria to become the next Venezuela.

in this case. They are will not benefit from the instability that is occuring. My point was that there are competing factions trying to control the resource that Oil companies want. Oil companies do not have an interest in fueling the violence, though their greed is the cause of it.

Nigeria, that gov't is going to ask Shell to give up some of their profit margin so that Nigeria can have a middle class.

They benefit from instability and chaos.

It is much more expensive to do business in a country where control of your production or transportation can be take over by armed militias then it is to bribe the members of a stable government. It's also much more difficult to find workers willing to work for next to nothing when there's the risk that they're going to be killed for their efforts. If Shell can't get the oil out of Nigeria due to the instability, then there is no money in it for them.

,...will and do!!!

Humanity has a far greater "crusade" than this kind of crap.

Love.

Wrap around THAT!!!

The last thing the oil companies want in Nigeria is a functioning democracy which would inevitably insist that more of the wealth created in Nigeria flows back to the people.

Riggs is not an outside force?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=557727&mesg_id=557727

oh, on second thought, I missunderstood you I think. You meant that Shell has now become an inside force?

When the Nigerian government was going to execute Ken Sarowiwa (sp), rumor has it, they asked Shell if they wanted the government to call it off.

Sarowiwa was a famous writer who was, with his writing, supporting the people of Ogoniland who were engaged in a conflict with Shell over who owned the land which Shell was drilling.

The rumor, IIRC, was that Shell said it was OK to execute him.

I encourage you to google and confirm my recollection. I think you'll also find articles which talk about how Shell has a de facto private army in Nigeria.

Just as in America the oil companies run the government, they run the government in Nigeria. There is no line. There's no "outside."

I think in terms of clans and not the boundries of land maps. So to me there are always outside forces.

So when they do something for the benefit of a corporation, I might initially be inclined to think that it was an outside force which compelled the government to do it.

However, there are governments around the world where the outside is now inside. Berlusconi in Italy, Nigeria and the US are the first three that come to mind.

Nigeria Leader Declares State of Emergency

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Nigeria's president declared a state of emergency in a troubled central state on Tuesday, invoking sweeping powers in a bid to halt religious and ethnic bloodletting that he said posed a ``great threat'' to national unity.

The declaration came amid reports of new violence by suspected Muslim militants against four predominantly Christian villages in Plateau state, wracked for months by cycles of revenge raids. Survivors of Tuesday's attacks spoke of gunmen opening fire on fleeing civilians and burning homes.

President Olusegun Obasanjo sacked Gov. Joshua Dariye and dissolved the legislature in the central state of Plateau, saying elected officials had ``wittingly and unwittingly encouraged acts that have subverted peace and tranquility.''

Nigeria Leader Declares State of Emergency....

***

Nigeria: Ethnic, Sectarian Upheavals Push Troubled Nigeria to the Edge

The latest outburst of ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria has raised fresh doubts over the ability of Africa's most populous country to maintain its fragile unity.

President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency in Plateau State in central Nigeria on Tuesday, following a Christian massacre of several hundred Muslims by Christian militants earlier in the month.

And Kano, the biggest city in northern Nigeria, remains subject to a night-time curfew following the reprisal killing of dozens - possibly hundreds - of Christians there last week.

Polarisation between the oil-rich, predominantly Christian and Animist south of Nigeria and the poorer and largely Muslim north appears to be increasing and many civic and religious leaders are calling for a "Sovereign National Conference" to rewrite the constitution and save the country from collapse.

Nigeria: Ethnic, Sectarian Upheavals....

...just a coincidence, I'm sure.

From Daily Times

• Obasanjo declares state of emergency in Plateau
  
• Obasanjo writes Sultan, Akinola over religious crises
  
• Why these recurring religious mayhem?
  
• Emergency rule: 42 years after, history repeats itself
  
• President flays Shekarau over Kano riots
  
• Mixed reactions greet declaration of emergency
  
• Plateau, Kano crises: Survivors recount experience
  
• Mixed reactions on President's action
  

From the Vanguard

• the plateau state of emergency:- Why I suspended Gov Dariye, others, by Obasanjo
  
• the plateau state of emergency:- Tinubu warns mischief makers
  
• Obasanjo declares Emergency in Plateau
  
• ...writes Sultan, Kano gov, says ‘enough is enough’
  
• the plateau state of emergency:- The 1962 State of Emergency, West and the First Republic
  
• Emergency, threat to our democracy —GANI, FALANA * Odunowo, Akinjide call for caution
  

Very useful

• Nigeria Daily
  
• This Day
  
• All Africa: Nigeria
  
• Guardian, Nigeria
  
• Nigeria World
  

"Hundreds of Muslims were killed by Christian militants in the town of Yelwa earlier this month."

:eyes:

To play this game all you need is:

1. Two different groups...your pick (religion, race or ethnic origin can be the differentiating factor)
2. Natural resources worth fighting over.
3. To start the game all you need is for one group to commit some sort of atrocity on the other....and then away you go....

As one poster said above...why....oh why? It's 2004...not 1004...why can't we just work towards a mutual good?

Nigerian MPs back state emergency

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Poverty behind Nigeria's violence

That's a decent piece by Mark Doyle. I don't know, though. I can't help but feel people are too eager to embrace crude, reductive conceptualizations of complex affairs.