Perspectives: Letter to Commonwealth Leaders Vanguard (Lagos) OPINION December 9, 2003 Posted to the web December 9, 2003 By Chuks Iloegbunam Dear Commonwealth Leaders, this letter protests double standards. During November of 1995, the Commonwealth suspended Nigeria's membership of the body. The sanction was a response to the judicial murder of the writer, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni environmentalists. Damnable as the action of the Abacha junta was, however, the execution of the Ogoni Nine pales into near insignificance when compared to the massacres so far perpetrated on Nigeria by the elected Olusegun Obasanjo government. To cite two examples. First, on Thursday November 4, 1999, a contingent of the Nigerian Army moved into Odi, an oil-producing town in the Niger Delta, and wiped it out. Hundreds of innocent, unarmed and defenceless civilians were brutally killed. Only the community bank and the Anglican church remained after the carnage. The government described the rout as a reprisal for 12 policemen murdered by a group of bandits. Second, on Monday October 22, 2001, a detachment of the Nigerian Army invaded the villages of Anyiin, Iorja, Ugba, San Kera, Ugba and Zaki Biam in the Logo and Zaki Biam local government areas of Benue State. The invasion lasted for three days and on November 5, 2001 the BBC's Dan Isaacs, having visited the devastated areas, filed a report, a part of which follows: "I don't know if I can adequately describe the scene. I feel I ought to be an objective, dispassionate eyewitness to the horror. But it doesn't feel right. What I saw was appalling and I hope never to see such a thing again during my time here... the soldiers came in trucks and stopped at the market. They jumped off the back of the vehicles, cocked their guns and started shooting. "Now, I've spoken to eyewitnesses. I've asked the questions. Did the soldiers say anything first? Was there any fighting going on in the town? Did they appear to be hunting down militia leaders? And the answers I got to each of these questions, every time, was no. They just rolled into town and started shooting. "I didn't need to be told the result of this attack. As we stood there and talked in the scorching heat of the mid-afternoon, bodies lay on the ground around us. Decaying corpses covered in flies. Left there I suppose, so the full horror would be there for all to see. "But that is not all. Once the soldiers had finished killing, they got out the heavy guns and fired at the buildings. Those that didn't fall, they torched with petrol. "And across the town, every house, every shop, every office...every single building has been destroyed by fire. That night, the glow from the fires would have been seen for miles around - and people that had fled into the bush would have watched - perhaps silently - as Zaki Biam burned." Now, what was the "justification" for this second carnage? A reprisal for the killing of 19 soldiers killed by Tiv militias who had been at war with their Jukun neighbours! People have a right to wonder why the Commonwealth which suspended Abacha's Nigeria should feel at home in Obasanjo's Nigeria. There is further cause for wonder. Mugabe's Zimbabawe is not in this year's Commonwealth meeting. The reason told the world is that President Robert Mugabe rigged the elections that returned him to power last year. In that case why is the Commonwealth meeting in Nigeria? On the elections that returned Obasanjo to power, did not the European Union, the Carter Center and all the international human rights monitoring organisations pronounce them deeply flawed and riddled with irregularities, intimidation and rigging? Or are we being subtly told that the real grouse against Mugabe is that the victims of his land policies are white farmers? Are we also being told that in terms of whether a government is in or out, formal illusion is more important than actual content? I am persuaded to be respectful to Commonwealth leaders. I am going to be charitable. But the truth is that, for a vast majority of Nigerians, the Abuja CHOGM is non-existent. The few Nigerians who know anything about the meeting deride it as chewing gum; others see the CHOGM acronym as Chop Our Government Money. For most other Nigerians, all the sirens blaring in Abuja, all the roads closed, all the policemen and women deployed for security, all the CNN and BBC air time gained by Obasanjo and all the noise are meaningless. The reason is that President Obasanjo is not giving to Nigerians the dividends of democracy which he promised. There is no Nigerian city in which the people fully enjoy pipe-borne water. Not even in Abuja, where residents are often to be seen running around with tin cans, searching for water to buy. There is no Nigerian town or hamlet in which constant power outages are not the norm. Since the beginning of this year, there has not been any day in which vast swathes of Lagos, the industrial capital, was not enveloped in the darkness of power outages. The Obasanjo government, according to its own figures, spent the colossal sum of N300 billion on roads during the first four years. Yet, there is hardly a good trunk a road in the country. Instead of using the country's scarce resources for bettering the lot of the deeply deprived and dehumanised, Obasanjo decided on deploying them into hosting CHOGM. This is not surprising, since he is an international statesman. Except that, for international statesmen, charity should begin at home. This one lesson the Nigerian president has proved wholly incapable of imbibing. That is why he has spent a third of his time in office on global junkets. Obasanjo has visited each of Britain and the United States at least nine times since his 1999 election. Obasanjo has had more international trips than all Commonwealth leaders put together. The real tragedy of the man's wanderlust lies in the fact that while he gathered flight hours like a test pilot, the Nigeria Airways collapsed completely and was scrapped; the real tragedy is that while he hopped across international capitals, he made local travel for his fellow citizens even more difficult. In four years, Obasanjo increased the price of fuel three times - from N19 to N22 to N26 to N34. Only last month, his government excelled itself by introducing something called "deregulation", by which the pump prices of petroleum products were abandoned to the devices of "market forces". Market forces have since hiked petrol or premium motor spirit to any amount between N40 and N70 a litre. No other Commonwealth country suffered this sort of escalation of prices in history. Yet it happened to Nigeria, a country that is the sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world. Obasanjo was an advocate of a National Conference to sort out Nigeria's mess. Since his presidency, he has become the only voice against this conference. While the country's cracks widen along old and new lines, he has been trying to hold the centre together by the means of coercion and the circumsription of civil liberties. All over the country are deployed elements of the dreaded Police Mobile Force, armed with the most lethal of assault riffles - the Aftomat Kalashnikova 1947 (AK47). We are in a cold and iron age. My submission is that Commonwealth leaders are wrong to turn a blind eye to these aberration. Odi Killings Nov 2000 Zaki Biam Killings Military occupation of Niger Delta Demolition of houses for which official approvals were given in Abuja Abolition of the Local Government Councils Plans to annihilate the Labour Movement Intolerance of opposition - plans to delist political parties after they had met conditions for registration. Violation of various aspects of the Constitution Interference in the running of states - withholding of their statutory financial allocation Unprecedented sacking of workers Using economy to sustain human rights violations through the arbitrary increases in prices. Verbal assault like threats to kill Hammed Tijjani, the Beninoi robbery suspect. Sitting on judgement over elections in Zimbabwe when those in Nigeria are still contested.   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2003 Vanguard. All rights reserved. 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