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IRIN-WA Update 479 of events in West Africa (Friday 4 June)
SIERRA LEONE: Agreement on safe access for aid workers
Sierra Leone's government and rebels have agreed at peace talks in Lome to guarantee "safe and unhindered access" so that humanitarian assistance can be delivered effectively, according to a joint statement issued on Thursday.
The statement said the two parties were aware that "the protracted civil strife has created a situation whereby the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans in need of humanitarian assistance cannot be reached". Aid agencies have said that nearly two-thirds of the country remains inaccessible.
Implementation committee
The government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) also undertook "to establish with immediate effect, and not later than seven days an Implementation Committee."
The committee will comprise representatives from the government, the RUF, civil society and the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). It is to be chaired by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in coordination with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Sierra Leone.
The Implementation Committee will assess the security of routes to be used by humanitarian agencies and disseminate information on such routes to the agencies. It will also review complaints that may follow the implementation of this arrangement to establish "full compliance," the joint statement said.
Release of POWs and noncombatants
In a joint statement on Wednesday, the two sides agreed to "the immediate release of prisoners of war and non-combatants," and a committee was established to implement this decision.
The first meeting of the committee took place on Thursday at UNOMSIL's headquarters in Freetown and was chaired by the UNOMSIL Chief Military Observer, Brigadier Subhash Joshi, according to a UNOMSIL press release.
(See separate item titled "Agreement on safe access for aid workers")
NIGERIA: Traditional ruler kidnapped
Unidentified youths have kidnapped and beheaded the chief of Ugborodo, a village in the volatile Niger Delta, news organisations and other sources said on Friday. The sources said young Ijaws were suspected of committing the crime.
"Expect things to erupt," Akin Akingbulu, executive director of the Independent Journalism Centre (IJC) in Lagos, told IRIN.
His assessment came against the backdrop of news reports of an uneasy calm in the troubled Escravos area, after Ijaw youths invaded the town of Arunton in the Warri Southwest Local Government Area of Delta State, early this week.
The beheaded local ruler, identified as Chief Ogibodide, was kidnapped from his home late on Tuesday the `Post Express' newspaper reported on Friday. Ugborodo residents were afraid, the newspaper said, because of rumours that Ijaws were planning to burn a Chevron gas installation at Escravos.
A leading Lagos daily, `The Guardian', said security had been increased following reports of Ogibodide's decapitation and the burning of three Itsekiri towns. The army's 20 Amphibious Battalion in Effurun, near Warri, has taken up position as far as upland Warri, searching cars and their occupants for arms, the paper said.
Ijaw militants unafraid
Despite the army's show of force, Ijaws warned on Wednesday they would continue their violence until the Warri Southwest Council's headquarters was relocated from the Itsekiri town of Ogidigben to the Ijaw town of Ogbe-Ijoh. The spokesman of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, George Timinimi, said the federal government needed to act fast on their demands if peace was to be achieved.
"He was reacting to the call made on Tuesday by the Delta State governor, James Ibori, who sued for peace after meeting with the leaders of the three ethnic groups: Ijaw, Itsekiri and Urhobo," The newspaper said.
The IJC's Akingbulu told IRIN that today's crisis between the two communities started when Nigeria's late military leader, General Sani Abacha, created a local government in an Ijaw area and after three weeks moved it to an Itsekiri area that already had three local governments.
However, the Itsekiri Survival Movement (ITSURMOV) said in an open letter to the Nigerian media on Friday that Warri North, South and Soutwest local government areas were "from time immemorial" the homeland of the Itsekiri.
The movement claimed that their "homeland" was "legally defined, the legal ownership of which has been declared and acknowledged by the highest courts in Nigeria and in the United Kingdom".
Meanwhile, the Escravos-War waterway remained tense because Ijaw youths had blocked it, according to 'The Guardian'. As a result, it was difficult to deliver food and medical supplies to people who had escaped to villages near Escravos. The result has been rising food prices, the paper said. Despite this, it said, calm has returned to other towns.
Community troubles overshadows fight with the oil companies
The fighting between the Ijaws and Itsekiri has, for now, overshadowed previous attacks against oil companies in the Delta area. However, `The Guardian' reported that some 133 oil communities in the Warri North, South and Southwest councils in Delta State have threatened to sue Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited if the company failed to compensate them for an oil spill last year in Idoho.
The warning was contained in a letter to the company's managing director and delivered after negotiations between the communities and the company broke down. The communities rejected Mobil's offer of 35.87 million naira (about US $377,578) as too little.
Individual, communities and cooperative societies - mainly Itsekiri - are demanding 1.71 billion naira (about US $18 million), the newspaper said.
"We want the company to show some concern and seriousness so that the people will not feel neglected or marginalised in the on-going payments by the company to all the affected coastal areas of Niger Delta region," Francis Amona-Monday, an oil consultant and spokesman for the communities, said.
House of Representative speaker elected
Ibrahim Salisu Buhari was elected speaker of the Nigerian National Assembly House of Representatives on Thursday, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) reported. Chibodo Uche from Rivers State was elected deputy speaker, NTA said.
Meanwhile, the loser in February's presidential election, Olu Falae, has finally congratulated his former rival, President Olusegun Obasanjo, after accusing Obasanjo's party officials of fraud during the polls, AFP reported. Falae placed an advertisement in the newspapers in which he congratulated Obasanjo, his vice president, Abubakar Atku, the 36 state governors and the public. Falai and Obasanjo were imprisoned between 1993 and 1998 by Abacha's administration.
In another development on Thursday, officials said contracts to lift crude oil were unlikely to be affected by Obasanjo's suspension of deals made since 1 January. "Most of the crude marketing contracts were signed last year," Reuters quoted an unnamed senior official as saying.
Oil accounts for most of Nigeria's foreign currency reserves, which fell from US $7.1 billion in January to US $3.75 billion by the end of May, Obasanjo said, quoted by AFP. He was speaking on Friday at the first joint sitting of both houses of the National Assembly.
AFRICA: Sierra Leone heads list of refugee-producing countries
Sierra Leone leads the list of refugee-producing countries in Africa, according to the latest issue of the 'Fact Sheet' released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) this month.
There are some 410,900 refugees with Sierra Leone as their country of origin, the UNHCR said. The number of Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea and Liberia has remained largely unchanged, some 405,000, despite the siege of Freetown in January. There are approximately 300,000 in Guinea and 105,000 in Liberia, according to the UNHCR.
To improve security in refugee camps in Guinea near the border with Sierra Leone, the UNHCR began the transfer on 12 April of around 50,000 Sierra Leonean refugees from vulnerable camps near Gueckedou to sites further from the frontier.
By mid-May almost 10,000 refugees had been moved and two sites closed although transfers are affected by poor road conditions and the short supply of trucks. The camps and surrounding villages have been subject to attacks from rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) from neighbouring Sierra Leone, the UNHCR said.
Guinea Bissau IDPs and refugees
After the ouster of President Joao Bernardo Vieira by the Military Junta on 6 May, calm returned to the capital of Guinea Bissau and no new refugees were reported in neighbouring countries.
During the conflict between the two sides in 1998, up to 400,000 people were internally displaced and several thousand fled the country. The UNHCR is still caring for around 900 refugees in Senegal, 720 in The Gambia, 600 in Cape Verde and 1,800 in Guinea (Conakry). It is hoping to begin repatriating volunteers before general elections scheduled for the end of November.
Liberia repatriation programme to wind down
The UNHCR has confirmed to authorities and operational partners its plan to wind down its Liberia repatriation operation by June 2000. UNHCR decided to promote repatriation to the country at the end of September 1997 when around 480,00 Liberians were in Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea. Convoys will operate until the end of December 1999 allowing Liberian refugees the opportunity to return home with assistance, the UNHCR said.
Meanwhile a UNHCR spokeswoman in Monrovia told IRIN on Friday that 185 refugees from Guinea and 487 from Cote d'Ivoire returned this week to Liberia.
NIGER: New constitution advocating semi-presidential system drafted
A committee set up by Niger's military junta to choose between two draft constitutions has voted in favour of retaining a system that envisages power being shared between the president and the prime minister, news organisations reported.
The text of the draft approved by the Consultative Council was released on Thursday. It was approved by a margin of 42 to 38, sources said.
The committee's decision will be put to a referendum by the ruling military but it was not immediately clear when the referendum would be held.
A media source in Niamey told IRIN that the smaller parties and the Mouvement national pour la societe de developpement (MNSD) were in favour of a semi-presidential regime because this system is less weighted in favour of the main party.
However, supporters of former President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, who was assassinated in the military coup in April, were in favour of the presidential system, according to the source.
Members of the Convention democratique et sociale (CDS) - which had formed the bulk of the government ousted by Mainassara in January 1996 - were also in favour of the presidential regime because they were "traumatised by the cohabitation" in 1995.
During Niger's "cohabitation", a CDS-led coalition government was paralysed by in-fighting between its CDS and its rival-turned-partner, the MNSD.
Abidjan, 4 June 1999, 19:32 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-964
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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