Tag Archives: Nigeria

Car bombs rock Nigerian capital

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In a clear sign that the next presidential election in Nigeria will once again not be peaceful, two car bombs were detonated in the midst of a capital event last week with President Goodluck Jonathan, the country’s former vice president who is seeking his own term after assuming the presidency during a succession crisis earlier this year.

President Jonathan, who took over running the country shortly before President Umaru Yar’adua died in May, survived last week’s attack apparently unharmed, and met with ex-rebels the next day to discuss ways of reducing violence. Such an attack is new to the capital, though terrorist and militant strikes are common in the much-abused Niger Delta region. The Economist:

All that was left of two cars packed with explosives was their smouldering chassis after they had been blown up on October 1st near Eagle Square in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, while surrounded by unsuspecting citizens celebrating the 50th anniversary of their country’s independence. At least 12 people died and dozens were injured in this year’s most worrying act of political violence. A well-known rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which is most active in the oil-producing south, claimed responsibility but blamed the government for the deaths, insisting that it had ignored back-channel warnings given 24 hours before the blasts.

The attacks took place close to President Goodluck Jonathan, as he was reviewing a parade a few hundred yards away in front of invited dignitaries. Shortly before the bombings he had declared: “There is certainly much to celebrate: our freedom, our strength, our unity and our resilience.”

 
This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Niger Delta always slick with oil

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Elisabeth Rosenthal reminds us that while it seems like a big deal to Americans when a giant oil disaster spreads a vast slick across our waters, we seem not to care much when the oil is spilled in somebody else’s waters by our companies supplying Nigerian oil for 40% our current consumption:

But it is important to remember that this mammoth polluting event, so extraordinary here, is not so unusual in some parts of the world. In an article published Sunday in The Guardian of London, John Vidal, the paper’s environment editor, movingly recalls a trip to the Niger Delta a few years ago, where he literally swam in “pools of light Nigerian crude.”

A network of decades-old pipes and oil extraction equipment in the delta has been plagued by serious leaks and spills. “More oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico,” he writes.
[…]
Here in the United States, people express outrage at BP’s actions in the gulf and demand that the oil giant behave responsibly in our waters. But should they also insist that oil companies behave well in the developing countries where their oil comes from? After all, many people insist on “fair trade” coffee and non-sweatshop clothing.

One more excerpt from Mr. Vidal’s fascinating article: “If this gulf accident had happened in Nigeria, neither the government nor the company would have paid much attention,” said the writer Ben Ikari, a member of the Ogoni people. “This kind of spill happens all the time in the delta.”

 
Where eleven employees of British Petroleum were killed in the initial explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April, frequent pipeline explosions in the Niger Delta region (sometimes caused by rebels) often kill a hundred or more people at a time, many simply too close at the time. As John Vidal explains in his article, the ensuing spills and leaks destroy crops, pollute drinking water, and kill vital fish stocks. Companies such as Shell and Exxon usually take their light sweet time about fixing the leaks, sometimes springing from ancient pipes that just rusted away. And until the relative recent democratization of the country, anyone who pointed this out faced the possibility of the death sentence from a government getting fat off American oil money. Even now, villagers report attacks from security guards if they get too vocal, while Shell claims villagers prevent them from making repairs to try to get more compensation money. Yeah right.

How much is being spilled or is leaking? Well, right now there are about 300 incidents a year, and that has added up over the decades.

One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.

According to Nigerian federal government figures, there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000, and there are 2,000 official major spillages sites, many going back decades, with thousands of smaller ones still waiting to be cleared up. More than 1,000 spill cases have been filed against Shell alone.

Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.

 
As stated above, the United States gets 40% of its oil from the Niger Delta right now, and Nigeria is now the third-largest American supplier nation, beating out Saudi Arabia. You should care about this. (Further reading, with incredible photos, here.)

The Gulf of Mexico’s Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is definitely bad, but we need to stop drilling for oil everywhere and change the whole world to clean energy soon… not just the United States. So many reasons to do it, and this is just one more.

Caption: An oil spill from an abandoned Shell Petroleum Development Company well in Oloibiri, Niger Delta. Wellhead 14 was closed in 1977 but has been leaking for years, and in June of 2004 it finally released an oil spill of over 20,000 barrels of crude. Above: Workers subcontracted by Shell Oil Company clean it up.
photo & caption by Ed Kashi, via citisven

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Nigeria’s president is dead

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This is not altogether unexpected, as he had been in very poor health for some time now, but Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’adua has passed away, an aide confirmed to the BBC. President Yar’adua had returned two months ago after a lengthy and mysterious health trip to Saudi Arabia, but Acting President Goodluck Jonathan (the Vice President) remained at the helm, as he has been since February. Yar’adua’s death should help resolve the lingering constitutional questions that threatened to destabilize the political scene in the oil-rich west African nation that contains about 15% of the continent’s entire population. President Yar’adua had been in Saudi Arabia for about 90 days, refusing to meet with or speak to officials, before the Nigerian government agreed to transfer power formally to Vice President Jonathan. By the time he returned to Nigeria to live out his final days, he had been out of the country and unaccounted for, for approximately three months.

Yar’adua’s death also seals the amazing storybook rise of Mr. Jonathan, which I summarized in February, when he was made Acting President:

He’s a zoologist and a hydrobiologist, who was an environmental minister briefly and fortuitously became governor after being chosen as a lieutenant governor in his state under a corrupt governor who resigned; then he was unexpectedly chosen as running mate by the outgoing president orchestrating the 2007 PDP ticket that won, and now he’s suddenly President.

 
UPDATE @ 10:27 PM: The NY Times has posted their summary of the Yar’adua presidency. Mixed reviews but some positive (small) steps toward governmental reform, basically.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Nigerian VP assumes control

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The National Assembly finally formally declared Nigeria’s Vice President Goodluck Jonathan the acting president, earlier this week, resolving the constitutional crisis of who was running the OPEC member nation that represents over 15% of Africa’s entire population, in the somewhat mysterious absence of President Umaru Yar’adua. Most of the American media had ignored the fact that the president had been in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment with no defined plans to return SINCE NOVEMBER. Nigeria’s Senate finally agreed to promote VP Jonathan after a BBC interview with President Yar’adua was released a month ago, in which he sounded very weak and again gave no indication of an imminent return. President Yar’adua repeatedly refused to issue a statement regarding a transfer of power for over 70 days.

The United States rushed to welcome him as Acting President because of the growing threat of instability as the political crisis continued. The US relies on Nigerian oil more and more every year.

I’m still baffled as to how this happened and why it wasn’t made into a big deal, as it should have been. In addition to an attempted major terrorist attack by a Nigerian, the country has faced some serious violence and rebel attacks, while the president has been gone.

Also, for the human interest angle, check out this article [dead link] on the amazing luck Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has had his whole life. He’s a zoologist and a hydrobiologist, who was an environmental minister briefly and fortuitously became governor after being chosen as a lieutenant governor in his state under a corrupt governor who resigned; then he was unexpectedly chosen as running mate by the outgoing president orchestrating the 2007 PDP ticket that won, and now he’s suddenly President. And what a boss hat he wears.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Somehow not good enough

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I still don’t understand why Republicans suddenly think that civilian court is not good enough for alleged terrorists, even though President Bush himself did that in quite a few cases and we’ve been prosecuting terrorists that way for decades now. What is especially preposterous here is that the Nigerian trust-fund terrorist case (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab) is nearly identical to Richard Reid’s case with the December 2001 shoe-bombing, as Jon Stewart pointed out the other day. Both attempted bombings used the same kind of explosives, both made their attempts on transatlantic flights, both weren’t Arabs (or any other typically profiled race or nationality), both were stopped by passengers and subdued, and both attempts failed completely. The only difference was that Reid put the explosives in his shoe, and Abdulmutallab put them in his underwear.

Reid was convicted in US Federal Court and he’ll be in jail for quite a while. Problem solved, by the Bush Administration no less. And yet, the Republicans keep carrying on and on about how Abdulmutallab, in a virtually identical case, doesn’t deserve due process and civilian court and how we should have tortured him. He faces life in prison from his civilian indictment on six serious counts by a federal jury, but that’s somehow not good enough for Republicans.

Here’s the Republican version of reality, 2009/2010 Edition:

“We have learned the hard way that trying terrorists in federal court comes at a high price, from losing out on potentially lifesaving intelligence to compromising our sources and methods,” [Senator] Bond said. “We must treat these terrorists as what they are — not common criminals, but enemy combatants in a war.”
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That theme was also amplified on Wednesday by Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina who said in a statement, “If it had been bin Laden himself on that plane, would we read him his Miranda rights and try him in civilian court?”

 
Which is to say, their reality demonstrably doesn’t match anyone else’s reality:

But several administration officials said on Wednesday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not initially read Mr. Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights nor provide him with a lawyer when agents interrogated him.

Law enforcement officials had concluded that because they had a planeload of eyewitnesses who could testify against Mr. Abdulmutallab, they did not need to worry about the fact that if he made any self-incriminating statements before being read his rights, they would not be admissible in court.

The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, has said Mr. Abdulmutallab provided “useable, actionable intelligence,” but declined to specify what it was. A law enforcement official said Mr. Abdulmutallab explained who gave him the bomb, where he received it and where he was trained to use it, among other things.

Eventually, Mr. Abdulmutallab stopped talking and asked for a lawyer, which he received about 30 hours after his arrest. It was not clear when in that timeline that the F.B.I. read him his Miranda rights.

 
The civilian court system that worked perfectly in very similar cases is somehow not good enough anymore. I wonder if it’s too soon to ask obnoxiously why Republicans hate our freedoms and the founding fathers… because that’s what they’ve been doing for several years now for us.

This post was originally published on Starboard Broadside.

Speaking of Nigeria…

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Nigeria has been in the news a bunch over the past week because the trust-fund terrorist was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker and retired politician. But the world American media somehow failed to notice that Nigeria’s president has been out of the picture. One would expect a high-level response to something like this. One would also expect that the media would notice if the president of a nation, specifically one representing 15.4% of the population of all of Africa combined, hasn’t been running the place for over a month. Guess not.

Nigerian Vice President Goodluck Jonathan said on Friday he was hopeful that President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is in hospital in Saudi Arabia, would return soon and continue to govern Africa’s most populous nation.

Yar’Adua has been absent for more than a month and Jonathan has been presiding over cabinet meetings. But executive powers have not officially been transferred, leading to questions over the legality of government decisions.

Political analysts, senior lawyers and a former U.S. envoy have warned Nigeria is on the brink of a constitutional crisis. The Bar Association has brought legal action to try to compel Yar’Adua to temporarily hand over power.

 
Vice President Jonathan insists that the government is running smoothly, but opposition members have pointed out that some policies aren’t being executed and that President Yar’adua wasn’t present to swear in the new chief justice who would have to swear in a replacement president… and therefore he may not legally be the new chief justice. It’s a bit of a constitutional conundrum. The Vice President has, for all intents and purposes, assumed control of the cabinet anyhow. The government will be rolling out more stimulus plans for the country’s economy, he said.

But with ongoing instability problems, rebel groups, and the possibility of Muslim extremism heightened with the recent terrorist attempt by the Nigerian man, it’s important that whoever is making decisions has legitimacy to make them. Order could break down if people start challenging Vice President Jonathan’s legal authority to enforce the law, which is beginning in the courts and could easily spread to discontented areas of the country. While the last presidential election had serious flaws (a.k.a. blatant rigging), it was at least a relatively peaceful continuation of the new democracy – setting aside several bombings and assassination attempts – and was a stable, non-military transition of power from one president to the next. The last thing Nigeria (or its neighbors) needs right now is a collapse into civil war. I’m not saying this is very likely yet, but it’s a possibility given tensions and economic conditions at the moment. So it would be best to resolve this as quickly as possible.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.

Al Qaeda in Yemen may be linked to bomber

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The Nigerian radical who yesterday attempted to bring down a transatlantic flight over Michigan has claimed to authorities that he received support and training for his mission from radical groups or individuals in Yemen. So far, this Yemen claim is a heavy focus of the Federal investigation into his background, though they have ruled out a link to the radical American cleric connected to the Fort Hood attack (who now lives in Yemen). British authorities are investigating his ties to London, while the American Embassy in Nigeria has been looking into the man’s father’s warnings that his son might be involved with radical Islamist organizations, and the US has ruled out a link to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (i.e. Al Qaeda North Africa).

The Yemen connection, however, is most interesting to me because of how much news there has been regarding terrorist and rebel activities in Yemen over the past few months. (According to Google News graph data, this year has had more articles about Yemen than even right after either the USS Cole bombing there in 2000 or 9/11). The country is fairly unstable, as it has been for decades, due to ongoing off/on civil war – with Cold War involvement – and rebellions and an extremely difficult terrain over which to exercise central authority. Yemen and Saudi Arabia have both taken recent action against Yemeni militant groups, most likely with US assistance. A recent airstrike killed at least 30 people and failed to take out the targeted American cleric. The Yemeni army also attacked an alleged al Qaeda training camp within the last week or so. Saudi Arabia (or the US, according to Iran’s state media) conducted an air strike on Houthi rebels in the somewhat undefined border regions, and some reports indicate Saudi troops may have seized several rebel positions. The Saudi government fears the creation of an al Qaeda base of operations in Yemen because of the central leadership’s stated target of the Saudi royal family itself.

Al Qaeda members earlier this week addressed an anti-government rally in Yemen, seeking common cause with various rebel factions. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni operations are known to be connected to al-Shabab in Somalia, the radical Islamist rebel alliance across the Red Sea. This is not to be confused with al-Shabab al-Muminin, the Houthi rebels in the north of Yemen. Last year Yemen-based terrorists attacked the US embassy there, killing 16, following up attacks on Spanish tourists and oil fields.

Throughout most of these articles, the common thread is that Yemen has returned as a dangerous safe haven for al Qaeda or is rapidly approaching that point. The would-be airline bomber’s claims of ties to Yemen will fuel that fire further.

This post originally appeared on Starboard Broadside.