'Nigeria: the context for violence' (2006-2013)

uh it looks like a classic case of suicide while trying to escape or suicide by trying to escape or suicide for contemplating escape or a shoot out while trying to escape when his finger misfired

anyway

he did not escape....:rolleyes:

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Captured leader of Nigerian militant sect is dead

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of a fundamentalist Islamist sect who was initially reported captured Thursday by the Nigerian military, is dead, said a spokesman for the governor of the state of Borno.

"I have just come from the police station and seen his body," said Usman Ciroma, chief secretary to the governor of Borno. "I believe he was killed in a shoot-out. ... I saw his body with bullet wounds."

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Radical Islamic leader Mohammed Yusuf shot dead by Nigerian security forces

Nigerian security forces claimed victory today over a radical Islamic sect blamed for some of the worst violence to hit the West African country for years after police shot dead its leader.

Mohammed Yusuf, leader of the so-called Nigerian Taleban, was killed after he was captured on Thursday night at the end of a four-day manhunt. His bullet-ridden body was shown to journalists by police shortly after his death.

Human rights campaigners immediately alleged that he had been executed and warned of revenge attacks. Police said today that he died in a shoot-out.

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Update:

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Probe sought in Nigerian hard-line Islamic leader's death

From Christian Purefoy
CNN

LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- Human rights groups pressed Friday for information on how a fundamentalist Islamist sect leader died and are seeking an investigation.

Mohammed Yusuf was initially reported captured Thursday by the military, but was found dead after he was turned over to police.

There has been no official explanation of Yusuf's death.

"We demand a full investigation into the circumstances of Mohammed Yusuf's murder," Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress, said Friday. "Whether he was a militant leader or armed rebel, dying in police custody is not same as dying in armed combat."

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CFR, 14 Sep 09: Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta

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This paper, Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta, provides an in-depth analysis of the rise of militancy in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Most important, the paper provides insight into the origins and personalities of the various militant groups and their leaders. It explains the ways by which groups move from protest to violent activity, from acting against grievances to heavy involvement in criminal activity. The line between protest and criminality indeed often shifts, or overlaps. The importance of ethnic identities and rivalries are made clear, but equally the shifting of alliances and loyalties that sometimes cross ethnic lines, on the other hand sometimes lead to fissions within ethnic groups. Hints of political collusion with militants run through the narrative.

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I sometimes wonder what nerve gets plucked that causes a government with as many problems as that in Nigeria to want to joust at windmills. I mean they only have an insurgency that is holding them back from truly using their oil resources, a corruption problem that sets regional if not world standards, and let us not forget, the art of the credit card-email scan. In the very best hotel in Abuja, one had to be financially suicidal to even flash a piece of plastic.

But here ya go: Nigeria is insulted by a South African horror film about aliens in Jo Burg makes ganster cannibals from Nigeria look bad.

Lord I miss Warren Zevon...

Tom

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Nigeria Wants Apology for Country's Depiction in 'District 9'

ABUJA, Nigeria — One of the summer's biggest blockbusters — a sci-fi morality tale about aliens and apartheid — is not welcome in Nigeria because of its portrayal of Nigerians as gangsters and cannibals, Nigeria's information minister said Saturday.

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I don't know if this comment relates, but I was talking to a guy in Chad once. He spoke English and was fairly well educated by Chadian standards. He was also the type of guy who wanted to get ahead in the world and make something of himself.

He told me his big dream was to go to Lagos because that was where things happened and a man do something with his life. In N'Djamena, that wasn't going to happen.

That comment struck me because all the westerners I talked to thought Lagos was a hellhole. This guy saw it as the emerald city.

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Originally Posted by carl

I don't know if this comment relates, but I was talking to a guy in Chad once. He spoke English and was fairly well educated by Chadian standards. He was also the type of guy who wanted to get ahead in the world and make something of himself.

He told me his big dream was to go to Lagos because that was where things happened and a man do something with his life. In N'Djamena, that wasn't going to happen.

That comment struck me because all the westerners I talked to thought Lagos was a hellhole. This guy saw it as the emerald city.

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That is hilarious! The Nigerians created Abuja because they could not fix Lagos. Then again I have been to N'Djemena--1984 when it was kind of a minature Khartoum with bullet holes. Maybe your guy planned to open a credit card/loan business--you know to move money that has just been found if someone is willing to front a small service fee :D

Tom

I was last in N'Djamena in 2005 and the bullet holes are still there; and I'm told more have been added since. There was also the crashed airplane on short final. N'Dolo had one of those too, only there you couldn't see it if the Congo river was high. It was next to the sunken boats. Those sunken boats were very useful actually. When visibility was low, you could pick out the sunken hulks easier than the airport, so you made your approach with reference to the wrecks.

What made that comment memorable to me is that really brought home how differently the world is viewed by an African stuck in a place where nothing much good can happen to him. It helped me understand why people keep streaming into those seeming dystopias. They are willing to put up with it for just a slightly better chance.

The desire to reach Nigeria from Chad is also seen in the apparently relentless flow of Nigerians to South Africa - seen as a land of opportunity. The TV documentaries I've seen, most recently on C4, were of Nigerians in downtown Jo'burg, in Hillbrow - a once risque area, now "off limits". See Google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hil...ne-navbar&cd=1

The South African sci-fi film 'District 9' has some content that has upset the Nigerians, I suspect some comparisons are made between Nigerians and the newcomers. Check the BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8264180.stm and this is a UK review of the film: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/f...-9-review.html

davidbfpo

MICROCON, 27 Oct 09: How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua People’s Congress

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Recent seminal contributions in the literature on civil conflicts have explored the micro-foundations of collective political violence. A great deal of attention is now paid to the non-state collective actors that organize violence and the specific constraints and challenges they face: gathering funds, recruiting combatants, enforcing rank and files’ commitment. The strategies implemented to solve these challenges have been shown to influence crucial outcomes such as the intensity of violence or the sustainability of violent groups over time.

The paper discusses the recently promoted view that organized insurgent violence should either be conducted by activists bonded together by social capital ties or self interested quasi-mercenaries, depending on the type of financial resources available to the group. We contrast this perspective with the study of an ethnic Nigerian militia, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC).

Section II discusses the existing conceptual frameworks related to violent organizations and states our analytical puzzle. Section III details and interprets our empirical findings on the organizational dynamics of the OPC. Section IV presents and comments the results concerning OPC militants’ profiles and subjective motives for violent engagement. Section V concludes.

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The Economist, 12 Nov 09: Nigeria: Hints of a new chapter

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....unusually hopeful things are happening in the Delta. As a direct consequence of the corruption and waste now being exposed in Bayelsa and other Delta states, a violent insurgency has wracked the region since 2004. Dozens of heavily armed gangs started attacking the oil industry, sabotaging installations and pipelines and kidnapping foreign oil workers. The militants claimed to be acting on behalf of neglected, disfranchised local communities, whose lands had been polluted by the oil companies and who received almost no money from the rich state governors. The militants were joined by criminals interested merely in a quick return from kidnapping.

Yet over the past three months the militants have been giving up both themselves and their guns in unprecedented numbers. The federal government has promised them an unconditional pardon for past crimes, a small stipend to live on and the promise of retraining in order to “reintegrate” into society. A couple of similar amnesty programmes were tried before, and failed, but this one seems to be working. In Bayelsa alone, by the end of October, more than 6,000 former guerrillas had turned themselves in. In Rivers state, the heart of the insurgency, another 6,000 had given up. Across the whole of the Delta region, the total may exceed 15,000. No one knows for sure how many militants are still in the creeks, but Nigerian officials claim that these numbers mean the end of the insurgency. Their optimism seemed to be justified when the Movement for the Emancipation of the Delta (MEND), the main umbrella group for the insurgents, declared an indefinite ceasefire on October 25th.....

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Jed,

Good find. Been spider webbing all the groups in Nigeria for sometime. This one statement sums it all up though.

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A couple of similar amnesty programmes were tried before, and failed, but this one seems to be working.

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:rolleyes:

That pile of weapons doesn't even scratch the surface of whats in that place, and I would assume or at least hope going after the weapon smuggling coming in from Ghana would be a high priority. I give this two months if that.

Probably the most accurate description:

Armed Gangs Dominate Nigeria's Oil-Rich Region
By Gilbert da Costa
Abuja
19 April 2009

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"You discover that even our young kids, even at the level of primary school; you see them engaging in most of these clandestine organizations and activities," said Onyebueke. "And it is causing a lot of disruptions. Most of them go into drugs, most of them take to violent crimes and you discover most of them going mental at very young ages. Some of them become dropouts and touts and that affects their productivity. And that also affects our economy."

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Violence in the delta, a wetlands region, is rooted in poverty, corruption and lawlessness. The region has the highest unemployment rate in Nigeria and is the most impoverished. Most inhabitants have seen few benefits from five decades of oil extraction that has damaged their environment.

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You look at them like very violent groups; their communities do not look at them like violent groups," he continued. "They look at them like vanguard organizations through which they express their displeasure; they express their anger on the exploitation of their land to the government. So most of the time we do not brand them violent or secret cults because their communities do not tag them that."

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In a BBC report on Nigeria and the Xmas bomber is a relevant sentence:

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President Umaru Yar'Adua is in hospital in Saudi Arabia with a serious heart compliant.

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Link:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8436497.stm

Background to the President:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6187249.stm and includes:

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In the past three years he has twice been flown to Germany for emergency treatment and visited hospitals in Saudi Arabia twice.

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Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua has been missing altogether from the political scene in the country for well over two months, due to an illness which he has been seeking attention for in Saudi Arabia. His absence has created much speculation about Yar'Adua's medical state, including rumors in the Nigerian media that he is brain dead, among others. However all of this it appears if I am stating correctly have created much political and even some religious tension and even the possibility of a potential power vacuum in Nigeria due to the President of Nigeria's absence from the country.

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Originally Posted by Kevin23

Nigeria's President Umaru Yar'Adua has been missing altogether from the political scene in the country for well over two months, due to an illness which he has been seeking attention for in Saudi Arabia. His absence has created much speculation about Yar'Adua's medical state, including rumors in the Nigerian media that he is brain dead, among others. However all of this it appears if I am stating correctly have created much political and even some religious tension and even the possibility of a potential power vacuum in Nigeria due to the President of Nigeria's absence from the country.

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So I was wondering what is really going on with the Nigerian President, and what is the ramifications of all of this if he really is critically ill?

Kevin23,

I'd start with the BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8458751.stm and the links it has. Lots of issues in clear sight and no doubt a few not so easy to discern. I am sure there is a good blogsite on Nigeria, I know nothing alas.

This guardian article has a good overview and consequences
http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&s...radua-goodluck and a recent interview by BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8453988.stm
since it was a phone interview, some think it wasn't yar'adua

I am sure the inter-religious communal violence in Nigeria featured in SWJ Blog news summaries; it certainly appeared in the BBC and the odd newspaper report like in The Spectator recently:http://newstaging.spectator.widearea...ill-kill.thtml

This is a rather pessimistic overview:http://www.opendemocracy.net/martin-...cs-of-massacre

The author is:

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Martin Shaw is a historical sociologist of war and global politics, and professor of international relations and politics at the University of Sussex.

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He ends with:

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The repeated massacres of hundreds of people are a challenge not only to Nigeria but to the world.

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I fear that real politics mean that this 'challenge' is far from any agenda in the 'world' let alone the sometimes interventionist West, nor more locally. Yes, Hollywood had a role with a Bruce Willis film set in Nigeria and a US SOF intervention against orders; 'Tears of the Sun' see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_of_the_Sun

Now, would AFRICOM be watching such developments - in a country where the USA has a strategic interest and to my limited knowledge no large presence of US citizens?

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Originally Posted by davidbfpo

Now, would AFRICOM be watching such developments - in a country where the USA has a strategic interest and to my limited knowledge no large presence of US citizens?

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I'm sure AFRICOM is watching Nigeria, along with many others; the US and the rest of the oil-importing nations have a strategic interest. As is so often the case in Africa, though, it's very easy to say that something must be done and very difficult to say what could be done that would have any realistic chance of success.

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Originally Posted by Dayuhan

I'm sure AFRICOM is watching Nigeria, along with many others; the US and the rest of the oil-importing nations have a strategic interest. As is so often the case in Africa, though, it's very easy to say that something must be done and very difficult to say what could be done that would have any realistic chance of success.

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Honesty will indicate the US is not an effective player in Africa. Better leave it to Britain and France and let them cock it up.

Think Munroe doctrine and leave Africa to China.

Earlier yesterday it was learned that the President of Nigeria Umaru Yar'Adua who has been ill for sometime, has died at age 58.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa...ent/index.html

It will be interesting to see what events if any transpire due to his death, and how this affects the state of affairs in Nigeria even though Vice President Goodluck Johnathan has been de facto President for a while now along with several other figures including the late President's wife.

SSI, 17 May 10: Sufism in Northern Nigeria: A Force for Counter-Radicalization?

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In light of the ongoing threats issued by Al Qaeda against the United States and its allies, the need to prevent the radicalization of young Muslim men and women remains as pressing as ever. Perhaps nowhere is this task more urgent than in the countries of West Africa. The global expanse of the ongoing war on terror places these territories in the frontline. With large Muslim populations that have hitherto remained mostly impervious to the advances of Islamism, the challenge now confronting the Nigerian government and the international community is ensuring that this remains the case. But in recent years, Islamist groups have been highly active in the region. The aim of this monograph is to assess the potential of Nigeria’s Sufi Brotherhoods to act, both individually and collectively, as a force for counter-radicalization, to prevent young people from joining Islamist groups.

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