NIGERIA: Villagers running scared despite state of emergency

Photo: IRIN

Women and children flee with all they can carry

BAKIN CIYAWA, 25 May 2004 (IRIN) - Women and children carrying head-loads of personal belongings streamed out of Bakin Ciyawa - a little village of mud huts and a few cement buildings with corrugated iron roofing in central Nigeria’s Plateau State - just ahead of dusk, fearful of another militia attack. Each day, as gloom approached, the soldiers and policemen deployed to provide security to villagers under a state of emergency imposed last week, withdrew to the garrison town of Shendam, some 30 kilometres away. “The attacks usually happen in the night, so we don’t understand why the soldiers always left at night when we needed them most,” said Mary Dambuk, a resident of Bakin Chiyawa, which has been attacked twice in one month. “That’s why we are still fleeing our villages to safer places,” she added, joining a column of women weaving along the road, her belongings on her head and her seven-year-old son in tow. A day before, on 18 May, a militia group had raided Bakin Ciyawa and four neighbouring villages killing more than 20 people and burning houses and granaries. The dawn raiders were Muslim Hausa-speaking herdsmen, said the villagers who are ethnic Gemai Christians. Just hours later, President Olusegun Obasanjo declared emergency rule in Plateau State and sacked the elected governor Joshua Dariye and the state legislature. A former military general, Chris Alli, was appointed to administer the state. Troops and policemen quickly deployed to Bakin Ciyawa and surrounding villages that were the latest victims of a cycle of violence that has torn apart parts of Plateau State for three years. Residents doubt the emergency measures will end the round of tit-for-tat violence. The dispute between indigenous, agrarian Christian tribes and northern Muslim traders and herders hinges on land resources, but has been fought along religious lines. More than 3,000 people have been killed since the initial eruption of violence in Jos, the Plateau State capital, claimed 1,000 lives in September 2001. On 2 May, Christian militants attacked the mainly Muslim town of Yelwa. Eye-witness reports estimate that several hundred were killed by machete and gun wielding raiders. That attack provoked revenge killings of Christians in the mainly Muslim city of Kano, Nigeria’s second biggest city in the north of the country. Fearing further killings, Obasanjo imposed the state of emergency. “Whatever the state of emergency means it is not likely to amount to improved security for us,” a resident of Bakin Ciyawa called John Yusuf told IRIN. “Policemen at the police station fled the night the attackers came, and soldiers posted here abandon us to our fate at night,” he added. He said the people are forced to rely on their own militia forces, armed with locally made rifles, machetes, bows and arrows to keep guard at night and defend themselves. “We are defending ourselves and we will also retaliate for this attack,” said Yusuf. Nigeria, a country of 126 million people is split between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. Concern is growing that the continuing violence in Plateau will severely hurt this year’s harvest in a region that is one of Nigeria’s main food baskets and undermine food security. Large tracts of farmland have been left uncultivated by farmers who have fled for fear of attack. Many herds of livestock have also been lost by herdsmen who have been forced to abandon them and seek refuge in one of the various camps in neighbouring states. According to the Red Cross, there are an estimated 50,000 people in camps bordering Plateau State. Critics of Obasanjo point out that the manner emergency rule was declared has done equally severe damage to Nigeria’s democratic credentials five years after the end of more than 15 years of military rule. Obasanjo had cited Nigeria’s 1999 constitution as the source of his powers to remove elected governor Dariye and the state legislature. But his critics have accurately pointed out that such powers are not specified in the constitution. Though governors of Nigeria’s 35 other states said after a meeting last week they backed Obasanjo’s imposition of emergency rule in Plateau State, several of them have since pointed out that that support is not unqualified. “We searched through the constitution and we did not see where the president derived the power to suspend the governor,” Achike Udenwa, governor of the southeastern state of Imo, told reporters on Monday. Udenwa said by taking such a step Obasanjo had created a dangerous precedent whereby he could usurp the sovereignty of the electorate. Under the Nigerian constitution, elected officials can only be replaced should they die, resign, be impeached or lose an election. Many analysts believe Obasanjo’s removal of an elected governor and legislature could provide ammunition for the military to sack elected civilian institutions during periods of widespread unrest in the country. “If [the] declaration of [a] state of emergency must necessarily include the suspension of the head of a government, then in the case of the declaration of a state of emergency in the entire country will the president and the national assembly be suspended?” asked This Day newspaper columnist, Yusuf Olaniyonu.