U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

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e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Round-Up 403
17 - 23 November 2007


CONTENTS:

CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Lawmakers threatens to overturn Bakassi agreement
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi - where Cameroon is already in control
GUINEA: Probe into abuses by security forces fizzles
GUINEA: Mamadou Dian Diallo - 'My brother died for our rights'
GUINEA: Not for sale - grades, diplomas, university places
GUINEA-BISSAU-SENEGAL: On the child trafficking route
MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Marieme Sy - "Yes, I am Mauritanian. but I cannot
   bear going back."
NIGERIA: Abuja's splendid centre surrounded by urban blight
NIGERIA: Kano - Why so dirty?
NIGERIA: Calabar - Why so clean?
NIGERIA: Police accused of torturing and killing thousands
NIGERIA: New hope for old 'master plan' on Niger Delta
SENEGAL: Poverty at the root of violent protests


CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Lawmakers threatens to overturn Bakassi agreement

The Nigerian senate has called for a review of the 2006 agreement in
which Nigeria agreed to transfer ownership of the disputed Bakassi
peninsula to Cameroon.

The resolution issued by the senate on 22 November called into question
the validity of the agreement saying that the former president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, failed to bring the treaty before the national assembly for
ratification.

The Nigerian Constitution requires international treaties to be ratified
by the national assembly before being adopted. The resolution said the
current president, Umaru Yar'Adua, should now bring past agreements
forward for ratification.

The senate action raised the specter of renewed conflict between Nigeria
and Cameroon more than a year after Nigeria handed more that 80 percent
of the disputed peninsula back to Cameroon. The News Agency of Nigeria
reported that the Nigerian chairman of the Nigeria-Cameroon Boundary
Dispute Commission, Prince Bola Ajibola, had said that a failure to
ratify the agreement would trigger a war between the two countries.

Despite progress in transferring Bakassi to Cameroon, tensions were
raised last week when 21 Cameroonian soldiers were killed by unknown
assailants. Cameroon initially alleged that the assailants were Nigerian
soldiers; Nigeria has since denied the claim saying the attackers were
militants from the Niger Delta.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75493


CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Bakassi - where Cameroon is already in control

Ten minutes after leaving the jetty in the Nigerian border village of
Ikang, our speedboat pulls up to a muddy bank now under Cameroonian
rule, a fact that many locals there say they are unwilling to accept.

"We do not want these new colonial masters," one woman shouted, and
others in the group vigorously agreed. One man said: "We are all
Nigerians and that's the way we want to be."

On the Bakassi peninsula in this southeastern corner of the
Nigeria-Cameroon border, people are undergoing an awkward transition
that has bred fear and distrust.

Last week militants killed 21 Cameroonian soldiers in Bakassi. A group
calling itself "Liberators of the Southern Cameroon People" claimed
responsibility.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that the peninsula
belongs to Cameroon. Nigeria acknowledged the court verdict and has
already handed over more than 80 percent of the territory. But the
people in this corner of the peninsula said they did not speak French
(the more widely spoken of two official languages in Cameroon) and they
did not want to live under Cameroonian domination.

The international court's decision was based to a large extent on
colonial-era maps. "Nobody asked us what we wanted," the paramount
traditional chief of Bakassi, Etinyin Etim Okon Edet, told IRIN. "Why
don't we have any rights in this matter?"

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75395


GUINEA: Probe into abuses by security forces fizzles

A planned investigation into alleged civilian killings by Guinean
security forces is faltering as lawyers have suspended their
participation and rights groups are looking elsewhere for a means to
seek justice for victims.

Citizens and international observers are worried that if people's
grievances are not addressed then the upcoming anniversary of January's
deadly military crackdown could trigger more protests and violence.

At least 137 civilians were allegedly killed by the army and police
during unprecedented citizen uprisings in January and February,
international rights advocates say. One Guinean human rights group puts
the number of civilians killed at at least 230.

A commission to look into the violence was created in May by a unanimous
vote in parliament but members have yet to be sworn in and begin their
work.

"We do not have much hope that this commission will produce any positive
result," Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of Guinea's Organisation of
Human Rights (OGDH), told IRIN on 22 November.

"There are people who are implicated who are close to those in power so
it is difficult for the justice system here to function properly," he
added.

OGDH is to meet with other rights groups and non-governmental
organisations on 25 November "to set up an alternative structure to
fight impunity", Sow said. "If we cannot get redress here we will see
what we can do with our international partners to bring [offenders] to
justice," he said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75461


GUINEA: Mamadou Dian Diallo - 'My brother died for our rights'

Sixteen-year-old Amadou Oury Diallo was shot and killed when Guinean
soldiers cracked down on demonstrators in January 2007.

As the one-year anniversary of the uprisings approaches, observers are
worried that if not enough is done to answer citizens' grievances and
bring to book those responsible for marchers' deaths, Guinea could again
explode.

For Diallo's 28-year-old brother Mamadou Dian Diallo, his sibling did
not die in vain.

"On 22 January he went out to march. He was shot twice, in his side and
in the back of the neck. He was trying to run away from the soldiers
when he was shot.

"For the moment, we cannot say they [his brother and at least 137 other
victims] have died for nothing. Their death brought us to the naming of
a new prime minister. Now, if we don't meet the goals we fought for, we
will have betrayed them.

"What the people want is change - it's a national necessity. Guineans
have suffered too much, ever since independence. We lived here in
darkness [in the Conakry suburb of Hamdallaye]. Electricity and water
have been scarce.

"We notice now that since the new prime minister, there is electricity
more often in the neighbourhood; there is running water. Before, we
could go one or two weeks with not a drop coming out of the faucet and
we had to wait in line for hours at a water point [nearly 500 meters
away] to fill jerry cans of water. Now, we have piped water for two or
three days at a time, with maybe one day in between.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75462


GUINEA: Not for sale - grades, diplomas, university places

For the first time ever in Guinea, professors have been suspended on
charges of corruption and students have been fined or jailed for
cheating in exams.

Educators have stepped up controls to prevent cheating and corruption in
the allocation of diplomas and university places. During exams this year
the common practices of buying crib sheets, accessing tips by mobile
phone or having a friend take a test did not work: Many students wrote
frantic notes to the education minister on their exam papers, or simply
left them blank.

In what one Guinean scholar has called the "Souare Cyclone" - a
reference to new Education Minister Ousmane Souare - Guinea is taking
aim at a system in which cheating and corruption have been seen as the
only route to advancement.

"Up to now these practices have been accepted," Souare, minister of
higher education and scientific research, told IRIN on 19 November. "It
was a system of utter disarray and carelessness and this had to be
stopped."

On taking office Souare - who hails from a teachers' union and had
worked on anti-corruption efforts in the past - said his top priority
would be to fight fraud and corruption. The country has since engaged in
an exceptionally open debate on the scope of the problem and how to
tackle it, students and observers told IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75427


GUINEA-BISSAU-SENEGAL: On the child trafficking route

In northern Guinea-Bissau, in the dark of night, a dilapidated bus
carrying 17 children is parked on a quiet side road. Its driver awaits a
signal from a bus up ahead in the convoy illegally crossing the border
into Senegal.

For 24 hours, the children do not eat or drink as the bus waits and
waits. The signal never comes.

At midnight the first bus is intercepted by police before reaching the
border. The next morning, the second one is stopped. The third and final
vehicle in the convoy is never found. All three were taking children
from Guinea-Bissau to work in the cotton fields of southern Senegal.

The convoy was one of three alleged child trafficking operations -
involving more than 140 children from all over the country - stopped by
Bissau police in the last month. Seven people - one from Senegal and six
from Guinea-Bissau - are in police custody in the north-central city of
Bafata.

Child trafficking is common between Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, where -
as in the rest of West Africa - borders are poorly guarded. But
increasingly, police and local leaders are trying to quell the tide of
youth smuggled to the cotton fields in Senegal's southern agricultural
area or to the busy streets of the capital, Dakar.

"I do this regularly"

In a detention area in Bafata - there are no proper prisons here - Aliu
Mballo sits on the grass, smiling. He is among those arrested in the
latest alleged smuggling operation, but he does not see his actions as
criminal.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75485


MAURITANIA-SENEGAL: Marieme Sy - "Yes, I am Mauritanian. but I cannot
bear going back."

In 1989 a Moor-dominated Mauritanian government expelled 75,000 black
African Mauritanians from the country, after a border dispute erupted
into ethnic conflict. Fourteen-year-old Marieme Sy was one of them.

Now, 18 years later, Mauritania's first democratically elected president
has invited the refugees to return. But Sy has decided not to go back.
Here's why:

"I was 14 years old, living in Kankossa, [in south-central Mauritania].
The 19th of May 1989, I went to school and found girls screaming and
returning home. They said the Senegalese had come to kill us. I fled
like them. When I got home, my father said it wasn't Senegal; it was the
Moors.

"I started seeing the city go up in smoke. Houses were burning. More
than 1,000 black Moors were 100 metres from our door. They had come to
burn and pillage our home. But they did not enter until the [white Moor]
Mauritanian government showed up - military police, guards and
everything - and gave them authorisation.

"My father asked the Mauritanian officials how they could force us from
our home. They told him to shut up or they would kill him and his
children.

"They forced us all into one room and took everything.

"They handcuffed my father. They took him to Kiffa, 90 km [north]. I
thought they were going to kill him. They took me and my half-brothers
and sisters to the police station in Kankossa [along with 300 others].

"I stayed there from May 19th until June 11th. Every day, police and
military officers came to choose the women they would sleep with. I
thank God they never raped me. The husband of one of the women revolted
once. They beat him until he almost died.

http://www.irinnews.org/HOVReport.aspx?ReportId=75386


NIGERIA: Abuja's splendid centre surrounded by urban blight

Patience Israel, a 20-year-old hairdresser, lived in a decent home in
Karimo, a squatter settlement near Nigeria's political capital, until it
was demolished in January 2006.

"That day was like a war," said Israel, who had to move into a room with
her mother at Chika, another squatter settlement on the other side of
Abuja. "It was so unexpected. [After the demolition] we had to sleep
outside for two days."

Central Abuja looks like a modern capital with wide streets and a
skyline with spectacular public buildings. But four years after a
massive urban demolition programme began in 2003, little progress has
been made in resettling the roughly 800,000 people that the Geneva-based
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) estimate have been
displaced.

As a result of this and the eviction of 1.2 million other people in
different parts of the country since 2000, COHRE has deemed the Nigerian
government "consistently one of the worst violators of housing rights in
the world".

Over 24 settlements have been demolished around Abuja, many by force.
"The government gave inadequate notice," said Deanna Fowler, coordinator
of the Global Forced Evictions Programme for COHRE.

"Sometimes they would come in, mark out houses, and evict within a week.
Other times they would wait months so people didn't know what to do,"
she said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75473


NIGERIA: Kano - Why so dirty?

Nigeria's commercial capital in the north is creating more refuse than
it can handle.

"The challenges are enormous," Garba Yusuf, Kano environment
commissioner, told IRIN. "This is the most disturbing environmental
problem we are facing."

Of the 2,000 tonnes of garbage Kano produces every day, sanitation
workers can dispose of only 800, he said.

The remaining 1,200 tonnes are piling up on the streets and alleyways of
the city, posing serious health risk to Kano -- one of Nigeria's most
populous cities with more than five million inhabitants.

People have no choice but to dump on the streets outside their homes and
on any unused space in their neighbourhoods including open sewers and
ponds.

"In a few years all the ponds in the city will be filled," Lukas Buba,
an environmentalist at Bayero University in Kano told IRIN. "The city is
already so dirty now. Imagine what it will look like then."

In poor neighbourhoods children play on rubbish heaps or are sent by
parents to rummage through the piles for recyclable items.

"Children that frequent refuse dumps stand greater risk of contracting
diseases, especially poliomyelitis," said Ibrahim Musa, a doctor in the
federal government-run Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital.

He said that the rubbish also exposes the general population to serious
diseases "When the wind blows it carries germs along with it and
deposits them on uncovered food and water," he said. "This accounts for
the high rate of typhoid fever, cholera and diarrhoea cases we treat in
[Kano] hospitals."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75444


NIGERIA: Calabar - Why so clean?

Of the many towns and cities on the African continent Calabar must be
one of the cleanest.

"We are proud of the environment in which we live," said Helen Ewar, a
student at the local university. "It is part of our identity."

She and other people gave a cultural explanation for their high level of
hygiene. "Cleaning is not seen as an activity that is beneath us Efek
people," Ewar said, referring to the majority ethnic group in the city.

There are few other explanations. "We don't spend a lot of money on
sanitation," said Elegance Edim, Executive Secretary of the Calabar
Urban Development Association (CUDA) the agency charged with keeping
clean this city of 800,000 people.

Neighbouring states in the Niger Delta where cities are far dirtier have
bloated budgets from state oil revenue while the budget in Calabar's
Cross River state government is relatively small. It allocates 12
million naira [US $102,209] a year for sanitation in Calabar, Edim said,
which includes programs to plant trees and grass in the city and raising
awareness on the environment with 'Keep Calabar beautiful' signs
everywhere in the city. "We are painfully short of resources and we have
huge challenges with one of Africa's heaviest rainfalls clogging up our
storm drains," he said.

But somehow the system works. Not only does the city look cleaner then
most others in Nigeria, but it is also more hygienic. While cholera is
common in nearby cities, Edim said it has not occurred in Calabar for
years. Other water-borne diseases are also comparatively rare.

The former colonial power had done little to develop Calabar. "It was an
important port town for slaving and trade but the British never built a
proper water and sewage system here and back then it was actually quite
dirty," Edim said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75442


NIGERIA: Police accused of torturing and killing thousands

Nigeria's judicial system is so flawed, human right groups say, that
police frequently take the law into their own hands, torturing and
executing suspects without trial, particularly those suspected of armed
robbery.

"People accused of heinous crimes like armed robbery, murder and rape
can buy their freedom in court," Shehu Sani, Director of the Civil
Rights Congress, a coalition of human rights groups in northern Nigeria.
"This frustrates the police who re-arrest these people and kill them,"
he said.

"Others are killed because they might implicate some influential people
while still others die as a result of torture to exert confessions,"
Sani added.

The accusations come on the heels of an 18 November statement by Human
Rights Watch (HRW) which said that the Nigerian police may have killed
more than 10,000 people since 2000.

HRW called on the Nigerian government to launch an immediate inquiry
into the killing in the last three months of 785 people suspected of
armed robbery.

Nigerian police spokesman in the capital Abuja, Haz Iwendi, told IRIN
that it will take time for the police to respond properly to the
accusations as they are so serious. "We will carefully study all the
accusations and verify them and respond appropriately," he said.

The civil rights group's Sani said he saw the police commit atrocities
first-hand when he was jailed as a pro-democracy advocate under the
military regime of Nigeria's former military dictator, Sani Abacha. "I
was witness to situations where suspects were removed [from cells] and
either tortured or simply executed," he said.

He said little has changed for suspected criminals in the eight years
since the country returned to civilian rule. "The police usually take
suspects to the outskirts of town, shoot them and then tell the media
that they were killed in battles with the police or while trying to
escape."

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75414


NIGERIA: New hope for old 'master plan' on Niger Delta

The government of President Umaru Yar'Adua says it is serious about
tackling the root causes of violence and poverty in Nigeria's troubled
Niger Delta with a 'master plan' to develop the region and provide basic
services.

Yar'Adua's new budget proposal for 2008 commits 69 billion naira (US
$566 million) to the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) for 2008,
more than twice last yer's federal budget allotment for the commission.

"[The Niger Delta will become] Africa's most prosperous, most peaceful
and most pleasant region by 2020," according to Davies Okarevu of the
NDDC, which is charged with implementing the master plan.
Representatives from the commission met with representatves from the
region in southeastern town of Calabar in mid-November.

In the next 15 years some US $50 billion will be spent by federal,
state, and local governments, as well as oil companies and private
foundations to improve the region's infrastructure, environment and
economy. The plan is based on three five-year phases which include
specific projects to build roads, sanitation systems and support
businesses.

This would be a transformation for a region where currently seven out of
10 people lack basic amenities.

Since oil was discovered in the Niger Delta in 1956 the region has been
the seat of the nation's massive wealth, yet the more than 1,500
communities that have become host to oil facilities are some of the
poorest in the country. Many are crippled by oil spills and other
environmental problems.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75383


SENEGAL: Poverty at the root of violent protests

In the morning, citizens burned cars, threw stones and pillaged the
mayor's office in the capital, Dakar. In the afternoon, they ran through
tear gas and threw up their arms in defense as riot police beat them
with rubber truncheons. It has been six years since such serious riots
in Senegal, generally a beacon of stability in West Africa. And both
demonstrations came down to one thing: poverty.

On 21 November, young street vendors poured into the downtown market
area of Sandaga, protesting a move by President Abdoulaye Wade to force
them off Dakar's busy streets in an effort to improve traffic flow. For
months, the government has been giving Dakar a facelift, building new
roads and hotels, as it prepares to host an international Islamic
conference in March.

Thousands of people from Senegal and neighbouring countries fill the
sidewalks of Dakar daily, selling art, shoes, electronics and anything
they can find, to make ends meet. The government has estimated annual
losses of 100 billion CFA francs (US$226 million) because of clogged
streets.

"We are not against [the president's idea], but on the condition they
give us a space to set up our stalls and sell our things," said Fallou
Seck, delegate of the collective of street hawkers. "We are citizens who
have the right to work."

The World Bank considers that one in three Senegalese is poor.
Unemployment rate estimates are as high as 40 percent, and the vast
majority of jobs are in the informal sector.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=75455


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