M&G: Four Shell oil workers taken hostage in Nigeria

Four Shell oil workers taken hostage in Nigeria, Lagos, Nigeria, 12 January 2006

Four Shell foreign oil workers have been abducted from an offshore oilfield in southern Nigeria, a company spokesperson said on Thursday.

"I can confirm that four foreign workers were abducted yesterday [Wednesday]. Armed men stormed our E.A Field and took away the four men," the spokesperson said.

He refused to disclose the identities of the workers.

"For safety and security reasons, it is not right to give details at this moment," he added.

The Bulgarian foreign ministry said one national and a Briton were among the four workers.

"The Bulgarian national Milko Nitchev was abducted in Nigeria and our embassy has contacted the embassy of Great Britain, one of whose citizens has also been abducted," ministry spokesperson Dimitar Tsanchev said.

"We do not know who took the Bulgarian national or for what reason," said Tsanchev, adding "kidnappings are frequent" in Nigeria and a warning to people travelling to that country is posted on the Bulgarian foreign ministry's website.

The Nigerian press said two of the Shell employees were Britons and the two other Hondurians, who were aboard a tanker, the Sea Eagle, loading crude oil in that offshore extraction zone.

The kidnappers arrived the EA field, where Shell was producing about 120 000 barrels of oil per day from its Sea Eagle vessel, and shot their way through before seizing the workers, The Guardian newspaper said.

The incident near the oil city of Port Harcourt came barely a week after Shell restored the production of 180 000 barrels of oil per day, suspended for two weeks following a pipeline explosion at its Bonny terminal.

Oil companies operating in Nigeria's oil region are regularly target of kidnappings and seizure of equipment by armed gangs and youths from the poverty-stricken communities of the area.

Such hostages are released after negotiation between the oil firms and the abductors. Such deals usually entail payment of ransom and other benefits to the the captors but oil firms do not publicly admit paying such ransom.

In a single incident in 2000, 165 local and foreign employees of Shell and two rigs were seized by restive youths in southern Nigeria. It took the intervention of the government before they were released. Since then, there have been various hostage-takings and seizures affecting oil majors.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest source of oil, producing 2,6-million barrels per day last year, and the world's eighth biggest producer of crude.

Shell is the biggest player in the country's industry, accounting for about half of total production. - AFP

Reuters: Tempers fray in Bolivia over used clothing imports

Tempers fray in Bolivia over used clothing imports, 24 Feb 2006, Reuters, Helen Popper

EL ALTO, Bolivia, Feb 24 (Reuters) - That Gap pullover you gave to charity might have ended up on sale at El Alto's muddy, makeshift market where mountains of imported second-hand clothes help dress the people of the impoverished Bolivian city.

Stretched out on plastic sheets among the puddles, men and women rifle through heaps of tangled tracksuits, velvet jackets and sweaters, hoping to pick up a quality brandname for less than a dollar. The scene at the market in El Alto near La Paz is played out at markets around the country.

"My baby is dressed in second-hand clothes," says young mother Victoria Bautista, gesturing at her sleeping daughter. "It helps us to economize and you sometimes find things that are much better quality than Bolivian-made stuff."

The flood of used clothing pouring into Bolivia -- much of it contraband -- angers local manufacturers. And though Bolivia is South America's poorest country, critics say accepting cast-offs from the United States and Europe is an affront to national pride.

"Our ancestors did not use second-hand clothes. It was seen as an offense to our dignity and in Aymara culture it is bad luck to wear someone else's clothes," said Emilio Gutierrez, who represents small businesses in El Alto and is leading the fight against the trade. "A lot of it is rubbish," he added.

At the start of this month, with protests by retailers going on outside, the leftist government of President Evo Morales extended a decree allowing imports by six months.

While that was too much for the manufacturers, who accused Morales of breaking election pledges to protect local firms and create jobs, it was not enough for the second-hand clothing retailers who have vowed to defend their business to the last.

"The extension of six months was welcome, but we don't want temporary solutions. We want permanent solutions to protect our livelihood," said Rene Arispe, president of the national used clothing commission during a rowdy rally in La Paz.

Amid hisses by passersby and shouts of "Out with second-hand rubbish", Arispe said the main beneficiaries of the used clothing business were the poor.

"There are many thousands of families who embrace this sector. This business benefits the poor people of the country who cannot afford to buy new clothes," he said.

While many of the hundreds of protesting vendors wore the traditional Indian dress of a wide skirt, shawl and bowler hat, others were kitted out in the kind of branded sportswear that is hard to find and expensive to buy new in Bolivia.

While a Bolivian-made shirt typically costs 60 or 70 Bolivian pesos ($7 or $8.60), a similar second-hand one can be had for as little as 5 Bolivian pesos (61 U.S. cents). "There is no point of comparison," said Gutierrez.

MIDDLE-CLASS CUSTOMERS

It is not hard to see the appeal of the business in a country where the average monthly salary is about $115 and 60 percent live in poverty, although critics are quick to point out that the middle classes are also big customers.

"Only a third of second-hand clothing coming from the first world is bought by the poor. The rest is bought by people with high or medium incomes," said Gary Rodriguez, general manager of the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Commerce (IBCE).

"What started out as a well-intentioned measure to help poor sectors of the population has become a lucrative business for some and, at the same time, a nightmare for the clothing industry for those who have lost their jobs," he said.

Second-hand clothes end up on El Alto market after a long journey through a number of middlemen. Charities in wealthy countries commonly sell on excess donations to export agents who ship tons of clothing to poor countries where they are sold to retailers by import agents.

Aid agency Oxfam, which campaigns on trade issues, says the used-clothing business is worth $1 billion a year globally, while in Bolivia it is estimated to be worth $40 million.

The charity, which also accepts donations of second-hand clothes, said the trade is a dominant feature in poor African counties with low purchasing power, and in some nations accounts for 50 percent of the rag trade in volume terms.

In a 2005 report it conceded that it could put further strain on local textile industries, a view taken by many of Bolivia's neighbors who ban such imports.

But according to a survey by Bolivia's IBCE, only 7 percent of second-hand clothing imports are actually legal. It says a total ban would help stamp out contraband.

"What we are asking for from this government is a full-on fight against contraband," said Gutierrez. The second-hand clothes sellers say they also want an end to the contraband trade.

But despite the controversy, for many shoppers a bargain is a bargain, even it was made in Thailand, given to charity in the United States and smuggled into Bolivia through a Chilean port.

"I do worry about the state of the economy, but this is a way to help people who don't have much money," said student Marianelly Ribera, huddling under a tarpaulin in El Alto. "I don't come all the time, but occasionally something grabs your attention and you pick up a few nice things."

Spiegel: Why Is Mt. Kilimanjaro Melting?

February 20, 2006, Climate Research in the Death Zone, Why Is Mt. Kilimanjaro Melting?, Hilmar Schmundt

The glaciers on top of Mt. Kilimanjaro are melting, but nobody really knows why. Researchers have turned the peak into an extreme laboratory to find the answer. But it's a race against time - the information archived in the ice must be unlocked before it melts.

"Remember this view," Lonnie Thompson yells into the storm. It's minus 10 degrees Celsius (minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit) as a fierce wind rips at his old woolen cap. "This glacier will be gone forever in less than 20 years." The 57-year-old researcher hunches down and coughs, struggling with the mountain, the thin air and himself.

He stands in front of an ice wall as tall as a house, and behind him the west flank of Mt. Kilimanjaro plunges more than 3,000 meters (about 10,000 feet) to the valley below. The mountain juts up like an island from a sea of East African clouds, towering over the shimmering Serengeti, a world of zebras, giraffes and elephants so far away that one might as well be seeing it from the window of an aircraft.

Thompson, widely viewed as the pioneer of modern tropical glacier research, is a living legend among climate researchers. He's met with former US Vice President Al Gore to give him his personal assessment of climate change, and music magazine Rolling Stone has celebrated him as an "ice hunter." Where others see nothing but fields of rubble, Thompson uncovers evidence of dying glaciers and the traces of a 300-year catastrophic drought that spelled the downfall of entire civilizations. For Thompson, the ice at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro is an archive, and he intends to use it to divine both the past and future of Africa's climate.

Working conditions in his open-air laboratory are extreme, to say the least. Though frozen, everything is constantly in flux. The steps cut into the ice yesterday are covered with snow today. Location markers suddenly disappear, blown away or knocked over by the wind. Sometimes, as Thompson lies awake in his tent at night, struggling to catch his breath and suffering the debilitating effects of high altitude headaches, he listens to the glacier's sounds: a cracking in the ice, then silence, followed by a metallic knocking sound and then a rumbling noise. And sometimes he feels as if he were standing on the twitching back of an enormous, wounded animal struggling to stay alive.

Dramatic conclusion; but premature?

The ice mountain at the equator is legendary. As recently as the 19th century, geographers were arguing over whether ice could even exist there. Nowadays, Kilimanjaro's tropical ice is once again the topic of heated discussion among experts. Is it true that the glaciers of Kilimanjaro will soon melt away completely? If so, how fast? Is this the result of global warming? And will streams fed by the glaciers dry up when they disappear?

To answer these and other questions, Thompson and many other scientists are busy studying tropical glaciers, but not all concur with Thompson's conclusions. American climate expert Doug Hardy, for example, who also happens to be climbing around on Kilimanjaro these days, is convinced that his famous colleague's dramatic conclusions are a bit premature.

But before other groups could even analyze their data, Thompson made headlines last week by publishing the results of his latest measurements. The glaciers, he announced, are receding more rapidly than previously thought, losing more than half a meter in thickness each year. Thompson -- in yet another highly controversial claim -- believes that if the ice fields disappear, much of the water supply at the base of the mountain could vanish along with them.

"We have to collect as much data as possible today, even if we're not exactly sure what it means, because in a few decades it'll be too late," says Thompson. More than 80 percent of tropical glaciers, including those on Mt. Kilimanjaro, he believes, have already vanished within the last hundred years.

A few hundred meters away, a crowd of tourists stumble down the mountain. Despite its official elevation of 5,895 meters (19,340 feet), Kilimanjaro's middle summit, a peak known as Kibo, is considered a walk-up, one that even an out-of-shape chain smoker can master. Each year about 25,000 visitors drag themselves up the dormant volcano, spend the night in giant tent camps and slide back down special one-way tracks carved into the lava sand. Generally, the groups are accompanied by vast armies of porters.

Popcorn in the "death zone"

But less than half actually make it to the summit. Those who fail are often kept back by altitude sickness, causing symptoms ranging from headaches, vomiting and insomnia to mental blackouts and cerebral edemas. Each year the mountain claims an average of six lives. Thompson and his three younger assistants, as well as another group of researchers camping nearby, also suffer from the effects of working at this high altitude. Unlike the tourists, the scientists spend about a week living and working at an altitude of about 5,750 meters (18,865 feet), where the air is only about half as dense as it is at sea level.

As brutal as conditions on the mountain are, the researchers can't exactly complain when it comes to meals. A long caravan of more than 40 porters carried the two teams' equipment and supplies up the mountain, an effort that's reflected in their fare: eggs, porridge and toast for breakfast, popcorn and homemade potato chips as snacks before dinner.

Despite the calories, the scientists seem to become weaker as the days pass. At this altitude, the "death zone," -- the altitude at which the human body begins to steadily deteriorate -- begins. After a night of confusing dreams, the scientists often wake up feeling so exhausted that a task as simple as tying shoelaces becomes a challenge. After a few days, their eyes become swollen, their cheeks begin to collapse, their noses are sunburned and jokes become a rarity.

Thompson has been punishing his body like this for the past 30 years. As far back as 1976, he was studying tropical ice samples he obtained from Peru's Quelccaya ice field, at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters (about 16,400 feet).

He's been collecting drill cores from the world's tallest mountains ever since -- more than four tons of material from 15 countries, all stored away at Ohio State University. "In a few decades you'll have to come to my university if you want to see the remains of a tropical glacier," says Thompson. After each sentence, he has to bend over and struggle for air. Despite the fact that he has asthma, Thompson has probably spent more time at such high altitudes than anyone else -- a grand total of more than three and a half years. But he has no interest in alpine sports. "I just don't understand why people would come up here for fun." So what's his motivation? "I guess I'm just stubborn," he says.

"Equator has been woefully ignored"

Thompson was widely derided when he set out for the Quelccaya ice shelf in 1976. Back then climate researchers saw no point in studying tropical ice. One of his first expeditions almost failed when the helicopter carrying the team's heavy ice-drilling equipment began lurching from side to side in the thin air. The pilot immediately turned back, forcing Thompson to make do with porters. But the incident came with a silver lining, as it prompted Thompson to develop a portable solar-powered drill to take advantage of the intensity of sunlight at high altitudes -- an unforgiving 1,000 watts per square meter. Whereas temperatures plunge to polar levels at night, noonday temperatures inside a tent can climb to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Thompson once even developed a sunburn on his gums after breathing through his open mouth for too long.

In the end, his Peruvian drill cores proved to be a sensation. They provide precise geological documentation of many climatic events of the past 1,500 years, including the eruption of a volcano, Mt. Huaynaputina, in 1600. Thompson's essays, some of which he wrote in his tent, have appeared in publications such as Science.

"The history of our climate can teach us how global warming will affect the tropics," says Thompson. "That's why it's so important that we obtain the data from glacial ice. The polar regions have been researched to no end, but the areas near the Equator have been woefully ignored."

Thompson developed a reputation beyond the world of climatology when he obtained the first drill cores from Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2000. His results were surprising. The mountain's tropical glaciers, he found, developed about 11,700 years ago. Paradoxically, this was precisely at the time when the last great ice age ended in the north. In other words, the climate of the tropics is "asynchronous" with that of the north; it follows a different cycle.

Like the ebb and flow of ocean tides, the African glaciers have expanded and contracted over the centuries. But beginning in about 1880, tropical glaciers began receding more rapidly and more abruptly than in the past. In places where extensive ice caps reached down to altitudes of 4,500 meters (14,750 feet) only a hundred years ago, all that remains today are narrow glacier strips and isolated chunks of ice in a moonlike landscape of lava sand. Thompson managed to turn Kilimanjaro into a symbol of global warming -- and he has triggered a heated scientific debate in the process.

Climatologist Doug Hardy is one of Thompson's biggest adversaries in the world of glacier research. "The phrase global warming is misleading, as are the alarmist reports of the complete disappearance of all glaciers on Kilimanjaro," says Hardy. The American scientist acts as a weatherman of sorts for the ice-capped mountain. And although he and Thompson work closely together, Hardy disagrees with much of what Thompson says, arguing that Thompson's speculations are excessive and his predictions far too premature.

Hardy laboriously works his way through the vertical face of the mountain's northern ice field. After each step he takes with his crampon, he has to rest until the painful stabbing sensation in his head subsides again. Small icicles dangle from his beard.

An athletic man in his late forties, Hardy struggles doggedly into the wind. Suddenly, he stumbles upon a jumble of antennas, solar cells and sensors protruding from the barren icescape. It's Hardy's weather station, which takes readings for snow depth, relative humidity, temperature and incident sunlight, then uploads the data onto the Internet via satellite.

When Thompson drilled his first Kilimanjaro ice samples in 2000, he asked Hardy to set up a station that would enable the scientists to learn more about the conditions under which the glaciers formed. Ironically, the data Hardy's equipment has been supplying ever since contradicts Thompson's theory of the tropical glaciers rapid demise as a result of rising global temperatures.

"Dryness, not warming, is what's causing the glaciers to recede," says Hardy. According to his readings, the average annual temperature at the station is minus seven degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit). Hardy believes that what the glaciers lack is enough new snow -- possibly because moist winds coming from the Indian Ocean, 350 kilometers (218 miles) away, are weakening. Besides, he adds, the amount of water from glacier melt is relatively insignificant, because most of the ice is "sublimed" -- it evaporates immediately, bypassing the liquid phase.

Hardy is a fanatic when it comes to gathering facts. This is his seventh expedition to the top of the mountain, and yet he still believes that he and other researchers know too little about its ice fields. If he hears the sound of a hailstorm on his tent during dinner, he pulls out his pad and immediately makes a note of the incident. When a colleague mentions some bold new theory, his usual reaction is a long, drawn-out "hmmm."

Will the mountain's glaciers truly disappear in a few years? "No, that's highly unlikely," says Hardy. "A few hanging glaciers will still be there many decades from now."

Mt. Kilimanjaro is treacherous terrain, in more ways than one. For example, when Hardy co-authored an article criticizing Thompson's theory that global warming is destroying Kilimanjaro's glaciers as "simplistic," climate change skeptics triumphantly misread the statement as evidence that global warming isn't taking place. Hardy hates being misinterpreted and often spends months brooding over an article before approving it for publication.

"Highest point in Germany"

When he's climbing around the glacier, Hardy sometimes thinks about his most famous predecessor, a stern-eyed German with a pince-nez and a moustache: Hans Meyer, the first man to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. Meyer is often derisively referred to as a colonialist, because he named the snow-covered African peak "Mount Kaiser Wilhelm" in 1889, calling it the "highest point on African and German soil." Tanzania was part of German East Africa at the time and to this day, the mountain's glaciers still bear German names, like Rebmann, Ratzel and Penck. But Hardy has a higher opinion of the colonial geographer than most, and sees him mainly as an incorruptible researcher. Meyer carefully mapped out and surveyed the glaciers, and even noted that they were receding to a small degree. He was the first to describe Kilimanjaro's various vegetation zones, from the savannah ("next to us stood the naked negro, and before us were palm trees") through rain forests and, finally, to the summit where, Meyer wrote, he encountered the "icy air of the poles."

Despite modern technology, studying Mt. Kilimanjaro is still an adventure today, as the climate researchers on Hardy's team discover as they set out to take readings at an electronic weather station near the "Breach Wall." Renowned Austrian mountain climber Reinhold Messner trained on this wall in 1978 before climbing Mt. Everest without oxygen equipment. According to Messner's notes on the experience, "it was gurgling, rattling, crunching and snorting nonstop. The wall was constantly vomiting rock avalanches and spitting out plumes of water. It was the liveliest wall I'd ever experienced."

The researchers suddenly find their steep path blocked by a landslide, evidence of an incident the national park administration has attempted to keep quiet. Local mountain guides say that a group of tourists was trapped by a landslide in early January. The bodies of three US tourists were recovered, and officials say that the bodies of about ten porters still lie buried underneath the loose rock. Apparently the ice that had been holding the rock together melted, causing the landslide.

Climate research in the jungles below

Not everyone is impressed by the extreme nature of doing research at the top of a mountain. "Climbing around on glaciers may be spectacular," says German biologist Andreas Hemp. "But plants tell me more about climate change than ice."

With the sure-footedness of a sleepwalker, Hemp wanders through the underbrush, among red-blooming flame trees, banana groves and ferns the size of trees. He has been studying the region's mountainous forests on behalf of Germany's University of Bayreuth for the past 15 years. Brandishing a machete to clear a path, he frequently sets out to inspect -- in some case centimeter by centimeter -- his 1,400 test sites.

Hemp lives in a colonial-era German mission. The glass windows in the mission's Lutheran church were shipped from Nuremberg, the church bells, likewise imported from Germany, continue to ring every Sunday, and the villagers sing German hymns in the local Chaga dialect.

The binders in Hemp's office are filled with dried plants. To this day, he's constantly discovering new species, usually grasses but occasionally trees. "The climate data collected by the German colonial administration show that precipitation has declined by about a third in the last hundred years," says Hemp. Some mountain streams are little more than thin trickles of water today. But Hemp sees overpopulation as a more serious problem for the region than global climate change.

"In that span of time, the number of people living at the base of the mountain has grown twenty-fold, or to about a million. The forest suffers as a result," says Kemp. "Illegal loggers are assaulting the rain forest from below, and fires have lowered the upper range of the evergreen forest -- by about 500 meters in the last 30 years." Poverty is often at the root of the forest fires, which are set by illegal honey gatherers who burn sticks of wood to protect themselves against aggressive African bees.

The loss of about 150 square kilometers (58 square miles) of mountainous forest in the past 30 years has changed the area's microclimate by making it drier. "The destruction of the forests may be accelerating the loss of glaciers, but not vice-versa," says Hemp. "In fact, all the excitement about melting glaciers has almost become part of the problem." As Hemp sees it, the park administration manages to avoid taking responsibility by blaming receding glaciers and deforestation on global climate change.

Leopards at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro

The climatologists working up on top of the mountain are also aware of just how complex the relationships surrounding glacier melt really are. After a long day at the summit, each answer seems to raise two new questions. One scientist even suggests that hot volcanic vapors emerging from fissures could be melting the glaciers.

The teams are constantly finding dead animals -- monkeys, antelopes, leopards -- in the summit zone, prompting them to wonder what could be driving the creatures into the extreme altitudes.

As they debate these and other questions, the researchers listlessly eat chicken and rice cooked with 4,000-year-old glacier water, their questions becoming more expansive as they chew.

According to recent results, drill cores dated about 2,200 B.C. contain an unusually high concentration of salt, possible evidence of dust clouds from dried-up saltwater lakes. According to historical sources, the region was struck by a 300-year drought at about the same time, causing harvests to fail for years and triggering the political downfall of Egypt's Old Kingdom.

"Perhaps we're seeing evidence of the same kind of drastic climate change today," Thompson speculates, "except that this time it's more severe and is happening more rapidly." What if the glaciers on Kilimanjaro do in fact disappear one day? "Then we'll study the ice fields on Mars," says Thompson, defiantly. The man is dead-serious. He's already been in touch with NASA.

CSIS: 1996 Background Paper, Nigeria: Prospects for Stability

Nigeria: Prospects for Stability, Dr. Robert D'A. Henderson, February 1996

Abstract: On 1 October 1995—Nigeria's 35th independence anniversary—Nigeria's present military head-of-state, General Sani Abacha, announced yet another attempt to transfer national governance from military rule to a civilian "Third Republic"—a process likely to take at least three years and probably beyond. Yet the New York-based human rights group Freedom House, in its 1995 annual rating survey, reported that Nigeria had slipped into the "worst human rights violators" category because of "its increasingly brutal military dictatorship and rigged judicial process." - February 1996. Author: Dr. Robert D'A. Henderson.

This month's author is Dr. Robert D'A. Henderson, an Ottawa-based trends analyst. He may be contacted by writing to Box 9732, Stn "T", Ottawa, Ont., K1G 4G4, or by fax: (613) 842-1312.

On 1 October 1995—Nigeria's 35th independence anniversary—Nigeria's present military head-of-state, General Sani Abacha, announced yet another attempt to transfer national governance from military rule to a civilian "Third Republic"—a process likely to take at least three years and probably beyond. Yet the New York-based human rights group Freedom House, in its 1995 annual rating survey, reported that Nigeria had slipped into the "worst human rights violators" category because of "its increasingly brutal military dictatorship and rigged judicial process."

Then, during the Commonwealth leaders' summit meeting in New Zealand and in the face of international calls for clemency, the Abacha régime hanged nine dissidents of the minority Ogoni ethnic group—including Ken Saro-Wiwa, a well-known human rights critic and environmental protester—after being sentenced to death by a secret Nigerian military tribunal, in what South African President Nelson Mandela called "a heinous act" and British Prime Minister John Major called "judicial murder". In response, the Commonwealth leaders suspended Nigeria from the organization, cut all development assistance and gave it two years to return to civilian rule or risk being expelled from the Commonwealth completely.

Implications for Canada
Enjoying cordial political and commercial relations with Nigeria since its independence in 1960, Canada's bilateral trade relations have centred around the petroleum industry. Currently, several small Canadian firms are involved in Nigerian offshore oil exploration as well as imports of Nigerian oil amounting to about US$600 million annually (less than 1% of its oil exports). Even so, the Canadian government was among those who strongly called for clemency for Saro-Wiwa and the other dissidents, release of all political prisoners and a rapid return to civilian rule.

However, widespread corruption under military rule and a deteriorating economy have raised a number of concerns, both to the country's own stability and to the international community, including Canada. These include corruption at all levels, international financial scams, criminal gangs operating drug trafficking networks and currency trafficking. As its previously astronomical oil revenues fell in the late 1980s, Nigerian robber barons and their syndicates (criminal gangs) have sought new ways to make money and, as exiled Nigerian academic Julius Ihonvbere has pointed out, "the only ways were drug trafficking, currency trafficking and Section 419 frauds¹".

Since 1994, the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Nigeria as one of the world's highest-risk business locations, behind only Iraq and Russia. Corruption continues to be endemic throughout Nigeria, with some economists suggesting it could constitute up to 10% of the country's GDP. At the grassroots level, officials and administrators ask for gifts of "dash" or "bread" for conducting even the most basic paperwork, although increasingly this is due to having to wait months to receive their already low salaries. Upon arrival in Nigeria, foreign business people are regularly asked by customs and immigration officials, particularly at Lagos, if the visitor has brought a "gift", especially American dollars

(New York Times, 19 December 1994). At the national and senior government levels, corrupt practices have almost become institutionalized, particularly with regard to contracts for "super- projects" and for the sale of import licences for scarce consumer goods. With contract tenders, a 10% to 15% "overpayment" in the tender offer is expected to be passed on to the government officials' overseas bank accounts. Another practice is the "sale" of import licences for the importation of goods, particularly scarce consumer goods such as medicines, rice, cooking oil and machinery parts. Often amounting to millions of naira (the national currency), these over- payments, skimmings, bribes, etc., are reported in the Nigerian media as "leakage" from the national economy.

Internationally, a variety of financial scams have been perpetrated from within Nigeria against business people in more than 75 foreign countries, according to Interpol data. Named after Section 419 of the Nigerian penal code, these "419 scams" include credit-card frauds and cheque forgeries on a global basis, multiple-identities schemes to secure overseas welfare benefits and academic grants and perhaps the most common, letter scams for money transfer frauds. Together, these activities result in annual financial losses in the millions of dollars, physical intimidation and, in some cases, even murder of visiting foreign business people—all within Nigeria.

Internationally, syndicates within Nigeria and amongst the Nigerian diaspora overseas—principally in North America and Europe but also in a variety of Latin American countries and in parts of South and Southeast Asia—manage criminal operations for money laundering, drug trafficking, etc. Profits from these operations have been estimated at over US$750 million annually (InterPress Service, Rome, 2 February 1995). Nigerians were originally used as drug carriers for foreign drug producers, but more recently Nigerian syndicates are purchasing drugs in the regions of production and arranging for transshipment through Nigeria and other parts of Africa and on to consumer countries. In the case of heroin, they are involved from the purchase in South Asia, through its transport via East Africa and Nigeria (or another West African country), to Europe or North America—and sometimes distributed through their own "marketing" network there. An estimated 30% to 40% of the heroin entering the United States is handled by these syndicates. Along with heroin transshipment, Nigerian media reports suggest that the relatively cheaper Indian hemp (marijuana) was being brought into the country for domestic users as well as being smuggled into the financially better-off consumer market in South Africa [known there as dagga], leading to significant increases in domestic use in both countries. In the case of cocaine, there is evidence that these syndicates are acting in partnership with South American cartels to move cocaine into North America.

Within Nigeria, drug trafficking has risen to such an extent—with accompanying criminal profits and violence—that a National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) was created in 1989, but it, too, developed a reputation for greed and corruption. After heading the government inquiry into the NDLEA's failure to stem the domestic drug trade, Major General Musa Bameyi was appointed its new chief in 1994 with authority to reform the agency. Among his first steps was a call for the return of the death penalty for the country's "drug lords". Even so, the Nigerian connection to the worldwide drug trade is still on the rise (The Economist, 26 August 1995).

A diverse Nigerian "nation"
While not the largest African country in territory, Nigeria has the largest population at about 100 million according to the as yet unproclaimed 1992 census, with a mosaic of more than 250 ethnic/linguistic groups. The three major ethnic groupings—the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast—account for about three-quarters of Nigeria's population. Traditionally, there have been social and economic tensions between the Moslem north and the mostly Christian south. Further, there is now a sparsely-populated middle belt of states composed of Moslem ethnic minorities. Although Nigerian military régimes have been dominated by Moslem northern officers, they have not imposed Islamic laws (Sharia) nationwide, and even Nigeria's 1986 membership in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) was allowed to lapse. Further, the military has forcibly put down serious outbreaks of Moslem-Christian violence in the north involving Islamic fundamentalists.

There have been constant "population politics" involving attempts to inflate regional population figures, as national censuses determine the allocation of federal funds for administration, infrastructure, education, health, etc. Although the 1952/53 pre-independence census was done only by rough count, the northern portion of the country was deemed to have about 55% of the population. Since then, none of the national censuses—the discarded one in 1962/63, the officially repudiated one in 1973 and the currently unproclaimed 1992 census suggesting that a majority of the population might now reside in the South—has been acceptable to all sections of the country.

Linked to "population politics" have been continuous calls for creating more "new" states within Nigeria to provide administrative voices for minority ethnic interests as well as increased networks for patronage. Beginning with three (later four) regions prior to the Nigerian Civil War (1966-70), the Nigerian Federation was later divided into 12 states (April 1968). The federation grew to 19 states by March 1976, 21 states plus a new federal capital territory at Abuja by 1987, and 30 states by August 1991; the current 1989 constitution provides for the creation of even more. Creating more states out of a constant land area can be seen as an attempt on one hand to blur the country's regional, ethnic and religious distinctions and on the other, to create additional "patronage fiefdoms" which cut into regional power bases of traditional political elites.

25 years of military rule
Since its independence from Britain in 1960, Nigerians have experienced over 25 years of military rule—with only short periods of civilian administration. Military intervention into Nigerian politics began with the 1966 coup and subsequent counter-coup which ended the civilian First Republic (1960-66) and led to the attempted secession of the Igbo-dominated eastern part of the country, renamed Biafra. After the federal military defeat of the Biafran forces in the east, the Supreme Military Council under General Yakubu Gowon continued to rule, claiming that national reconciliation and reconstruction was possible only under a "neutral" military administration. During this period, Nigeria became OPEC's fourth largest producer, reaping windfall revenues from the 1973 world oil price rises. This oil wealth became the basis of the country's rapid industrialization efforts, its constant state of political turmoil and its rampant corruption.

Nigeria's military rulers spent billions of the country's petro-dollars on developing a range of prestige mega-industrial projects as well as construction of a massive new national infrastructure of autobahns, airports, telecommunications, universities, government complexes, a new capital, and a network of military bases and advanced weaponry. But, for a country awash in oil money, such grandiose projects provided extensive opportunities for corruption schemes, including overpayments on contract bids and advanced fees frauds on actual and fictitious oil sales.

Despite its petroleum wealth and over two decades of industrialization programs, Nigeria has not reached two intertwined national goals: elected, accountable government and an industrialized economy. Rather, massive government expenditure and pervasive corruption from its once immense oil revenues have reduced Nigeria to its current status of being considered a least- developed country by the United Nations Development Program. Only its widely touted efforts towards its other national goal of being acknowledged as "the African regional superpower"—in terms of its population, size of economy and military force—appear to have been recognized, at least in West Africa.

General Obasanjo's hand-over of power
In 1975, General Gowon was overthrown after going back on his promise to "return power to civilian rule by 1976." The new régime under General Murtala Mohammed took rapid steps to remove corrupt officials and emphasize national development and elections, but Mohammed was killed in an unsuccessful counter-coup in February 1976. His chief of staff, General Olusegun Obasanjo, assumed Mohammed's post and his promise to hand over political power. After a series of elections in 1979, Obasanjo voluntarily relinquished power to the civilian Second Republic government (1979-83) under President Shehu Shagari.

The failure of this second attempt at civilian rule stemmed as much from massive political patronage and continuing corruption as from the poor quality of politicians. By 1983, the military again intervened, and General Muhummad Buhari deposed Shagari. Buhari was replaced in a palace coup in 1985 by General Ibrahim Babangida. Despite initial popular support, the Babangida régime also failed to provide for economic growth. It rejected the International Monetary Fund's harsh terms for financial assistance and continued its predecessor's policies of national austerity and monetary control. Falling world oil prices continued to undermine the economy, leading to labour unrest and increasing student riots to protest military rule and the ban on political activities.

Failure of "African democratization" in Nigeria
Although the Babangida régime repeatedly expressed a commitment to return the country to civilian rule, it slowly devised another "complex process" within which political parties could operate. On 12 June 1993, Nigeria held presidential elections for the Third Republic. However, half-way through publishing the voting results, General Babangida annulled the elections, which international observers had declared free and fair, and denied political power to the acknowledged winner, Chief Moshood Abiola.

After this "stolen election", protests, particularly around Lagos, increased with the formation of numerous opposition organizations. Many opposition leaders were jailed, while some were co- opted into government posts by the military régime.

With many of the opposition leadership, including Chief Abiola, imprisoned or under house arrest, there is currently no nationwide democratic movement, nor a government-in-waiting. The recent formation of the National Liberation Council of Nigeria, as announced by the country's Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka (now in exile) is attempting to coordinate the various opposition grouping. There has also been talk of creating "a strong military-backed party" on the Egyptian pattern, but can Nigeria's military class fit into a democratization process?

While Nigerians continue to see their standard of living decline, there is still no central focus for coordinating their anger and calls for reform. While the Abacha régime continues to boast of Nigeria's regional power status during its campaign for the proposed African seat at the UN Security Council, national self-esteem plummets. The régime's increasingly repressive response to popular discontent has become the focus of nationwide popular outrage. But, as military and civilian élites alike are deeply corrupted, Prof. Claude Ake, one of country's leading intellectuals, has noted that "our [Nigerian] problems go beyond democracy.... We prefer to consume without producing; that is why we contest political power so fiercely. Political power gives us abundant coercive resources to appropriate and consume" [New York Times, 30 October 1995]. Until political power is separated from embezzlement and personal enrichment, particularly on the scale conducted in Nigeria, democratization process appears impossible.

Crisis of national legitimacy
In its 1994 annual report, the Central Bank of Nigeria conceded that the country's economic conditions had worsened for the fourth consecutive year. National industrialization prosperity for the professional classes and industrial workers had not taken place. Universities, long seen as a key path to personal prosperity and higher social status, had been under-funded for a decade. Anti-military protests by staff and students repeatedly led to institutional closures by successive military régimes. In addition, many Nigerian students sent overseas for professional and technical studies chose not to return or, after the country failed to achieve economic take-off, rejoined the Nigerian diaspora overseas.

The continued inability of domestic agriculture to supply basic food stuffs at what amounts to subsidized prices demanded by urban residents has led to growing discontent. With many urban Nigerians unable to feed themselves adequately on their salaried earnings (often months late in being paid), the government has been forced to search for international financing for massive importation of food items to stem urban unrest. Basic health and social services continue to deteriorate. AIDS-related deaths continue to claim many lives amongst government officials, business people and professional groups in urban centres, while the HIV virus has continued to spread along the major transport arteries and into the rural areas.

This failure of the Nigerian dream for accountable government, national industrialization and international status has resulted in a severe crisis of national legitimacy for the central government. Although critics of African economic development note that Nigeria suffers from a familiar African cycle of poverty, coups and ethnic violence, Nigerians see their large though diverse population with its vast oil wealth as a source of strength and a potential basis for a successful economic take-off. Nigerian military and political élites have shown a barely concealed jealousy for South Africa's continental ascendancy, following its successful general elections in 1994 which gave nationwide legitimacy to its multi-racial government.

Weaknesses of Nigerian military régimes
During 25 years of military rule, military-dominated "supreme councils" have dictated national policies, allocated federal funds, co-opted opposition politicians with "perks and posts", and slowly established regulations—and then revoked them—for future political activities. Despite claims to organizational and nation-building skills, military régimes have repeatedly shown a lack of expertise in managing Nigeria's economy. Rather, they have co-opted former politicians, academics and others into ministerial posts. The total breakdown of accountability for public spending was highlighted by Pius Okigbo's 1994 report which found that from 1988 to June 1994, some $12.5 billion (US) in government revenues in the extraordinary "Special Accounts" were unaccounted for [Africa Confidential, London, 4 November 1994].

Continuing weakness of Nigeria's "mono-economy"
With the majority of its population involved in subsistence farming, Nigeria continues to depend on oil exports for most of its government revenues. However, despite being the fourth-largest OPEC oil-producer, over the past decade Nigeria's external debt has risen to over $30 billion—the largest in Africa and equivalent to the country's GDP—requiring a debt service of $5 billion annually. According to a November 1991 World Bank internal report, "Nigeria's systematic mismanagement of public resources is unsustainable" [Christian Science Monitor, Boston, 5 August 1992].

With an economy based on a land transport system of trucks and "long-distance taxis" for distribution, Nigerians repeatedly suffer from regular fuel shortages. Unemployment is widespread and growing, with inflation approaching 100% annually. Against this deteriorating situation, total annual oil revenues, accounting for between 80% - 90% of the country's foreign earnings, have declined by more than half through a combination of mismanagement and falling prices [New York Times, 10 July 1995]. In order to have sole access to the still-sizeable oil revenues in the Petroleum Special Trust Fund, the military régime under Decree No. 25 (1994) placed the trust fund under the control of the head of state, namely General Abacha, and a 10-man special body appointed by him to manage the fund.

International pressure for democratization
Even prior to its suspension, the Commonwealth had been conducting "quiet diplomacy" to pressure Nigeria's adherence to the Commonwealth's 1991 Harare Principles on good government. In December 1994, its Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku—Nigeria's most senior international civil servant—strongly condemned military rule, pointing out that the Nigerian "army should have no place in politics... Military government is the polar opposite of accountable governance" (Commonwealth Currents, London, January 1995). Similarly, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)—which included Canada's Flora MacDonald—investigated the Nigerian situation. Its 1995 report Nigeria: Stolen by Generals called for acceptance of the 1993 election results and the release of all political prisoners. Unlike the Commonwealth's decision to suspend Nigeria and consider imposing sanctions, the December 1995 Le Francophonie summit in Benin—a neighbouring country to Nigeria—chose only to adopt a "soft criticism" of the Nigerian situation.

Alternatively, South African President Nelson Mandela has campaigned for strong sanctions against Nigeria to ensure that democracy is attained in "the shortest possible time". Although he has criticized the opposition movement for being "weak and ineffectual", Mandela has pointed out that the removal of General Abacha ultimately depended on Nigerians themselves [The Independent, London, 27 November 1995]. Interestingly, it is South African criticism that has drawn the most vehement reactions from the Nigerian régime—partly due to Nigeria's financial support in the anti-apartheid struggle and its efforts to enforce an oil embargo against white-ruled Rhodesia and South Africa.

The value of an embargo on Nigerian oil—if specifically targeted—is that the loss of export revenues would show the Abacha régime that adverse and totally unacceptable deterioration of the economy, and with it national stability, would result if the sanctions continued. The African- American TransAfrica lobby group in the United States, whose campaign for sanctions against apartheid South Africa led to the imposition of American sanctions in the late 1980s, would welcome international solidarity for its high-profile campaign for American sanctions against Nigeria.

An international oil embargo would have a massive impact on Nigeria's shaky economy leading to renewed labour strikes and urban rioting. This could provide a "national security" pretext for the Abacha régime to hold onto political power. But, a collapse of central government—even if it is a military régime—could prove to be the final tear in the country's very fragile "nationhood" fabric, almost certainly removing the last supports to the national economy and fracturing the country. Existing factions within the military would attempt to establish martial control over the oil fields in the southeast and the major urban centres in the north and southwest.

Becoming "a failed state"?
Even without economic sanctions, Nigeria is in danger of becoming what the UN Secretary General has called "a failed state", such as Yugoslavia, Haiti and Somalia. The UNDP Human Development Report 1994 for "predicting societal disintegration" cited Nigeria as a prime possibility, given the wide social and economic disparities between its states, noting they were among the worst in the world. And if Nigeria does crash into anarchy, it would take some of its West African neighbouring countries with it—transforming the region into a global crisis zone.

Prospects
For the short-term, any prospects for democratization in Nigeria—and with it, a halt to its economic deterioration—are linked to the possible emergence of a political leadership, whether military or civilian, that zealously abhors the gross corruption and oppressive brutality that have increasingly characterized the Abacha military régime. It is just such an extreme reaction which most worries General Abacha and his inner circle of military commanders. They continually fear future counter-coups which would depose them—particularly coups by junior officers from states in the Middle Belt and the south. On the other hand, the civilian opposition currently poses little threat; it is divisive and lacks a central focus, despite efforts by the recently formed National Liberation Council. Further, many opposition figures and former political leaders continue to be susceptible to being co-opted into government posts. Similarly, there is little evidence of secessionist sentiments amongst Nigeria's various smaller ethnic groupings. Such fragmentary pressures have been channelled into calls for more new states, hinged to the central government's monopoly over petro-dollars revenues.

Internationally, in the face of growing foreign criticism, the Abacha régime has disdained the protests by Western governments, international organizations like the Commonwealth, and human rights critics. The one exception has been the régime's sharp reaction to the South African government's call for an oil embargo. This current high-tension relationship between the two African countries might provide President Mandela with leverage to mediate a possible transfer of power deal between the Abacha régime and a civilian administration lead by Chief Abiola.

If Nigeria's current societal and economic trends are not reversed, there will inevitably be a number of medium- and long-term consequences. With little funding for maintenance of existing infrastructure and equipment, government services and manufacturing industries will continue to decline. As the economy collapses, little new foreign investment in Nigeria will take place, except possibly "high risk/high gain" capital inflows. But even such short-term funds are likely to be directed towards currency and investment fraud, money-laundering, and other illegal activities.

Linked to this dismal current outlook, a number of disruptive events could bring about the country's societal and economic collapse. Politically, the death in prison of Chief Abiola, who is presently in poor health, could provide the spark for massive urban unrest, especially in the southwest. The Abacha régime appears to be prepared to risk such a "martyr's prison death" rather than release him during its declared political transition. Economically, various international factors could undercut the already shaky Nigerian economy, including a further decline in world petroleum prices and resultant revenues; another devaluation of the naira and/or collapse of its convertibility would have massive repercussions on its balance of payments and debt repayments; a drastic fall in foreign exchange reserves would halt imports. Socially, renewed outbreaks of Christian-Moslem fighting on a massive scale in northern Nigerian cities, possibly provoked by Islamic fundamentalists, could detonate regional tensions.

What is certain is that nationally there will be further societal disintegration from such disruptive factors as a continuing weakening of public health services coupled with rising cases of HIV/AIDS, increasingly erratic electrical supplies and inadequate domestic agricultural production coupled with government restrictions on food imports. As regional and urban unrest rises, there will be further coup attempts and with them, the possibility of a successful coup by junior military officers.

Alternatively, Nigeria's prospects for stability appear to rest on finding a permanent political role for its "military class" within any process of democratization. Failure to do this will see the continuation of the status quo: military rulers administering the country's slide down the slippery slope to becoming "a failed state". Such a state of anarchy would lead to regional armed groups fighting over the country's urban areas and its principal natural resources, in particular the oil fields in the southeast—probably with the intervention of foreign interests. This would necessitate massive international humanitarian action to assist the millions of displaced civilians as well as lead to calls for a regional peacekeeping operation to separate the combatants.

Glossary of key Nigerian Players (as of January 1996)
General Sani ABACHA—currently chairman of the governing military-dominant Provisional Ruling Council (PRC), President/Head of State, Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, and Minister of Defence since seizing power in an October 1993 coup which overthrew the Interim National Government (ING) that followed the ouster of previous military ruler General Ibrahim BABANGIDA (a northerner from Niger State) in August 1993. Abacha had participated in the 1983 coup which ended the civilian Second Republic (1979-83) under President Alhaji Shehu SHAGARI and brought General Muhammadu BUHARI to power and in the 1985 coup which brought Babangida to power and served as his defence minister.[Return]

Chief Moshood Kasimavo Olawale ABIOLA—as the reported winner of the military-annulled June 12, 1993 presidential elections which would have transferred power to a civilian Third Republic, he has been imprisoned in June 1994 on treason charges by the current Abacha military regime. Abiola steadfastly refuses any conditional release from prison , despite his worsening health, that does not recognize his electoral mandate. In January 1996, Nigerian media reports stated that military authorities were now demanding that Abiola must not only halt all his political activities, but also leave the country in exchange for his freedom—something he has refused to do.[Return]

Chief Emeka ANYAOKU—the Commonwealth Secretary General based in London (UK) and a former Nigerian foreign minister in the 1970s, he gave a 19 December 1994 speech in the national capital Abuja strongly condemning military rule in Nigeria.[Return]

Lt-General Oladipo DIYA—as Chief of Defence Staff after the ouster of General Babangida, Diya assisted General Abacha in the October 1993 coup. Currently Chief of General Staff, he is second in command of the Provisional Ruling Council after Abacha, acting as the military regime's prime minister.

National Liberation Council of Nigeria (NALICON)—formed in June 1995, the 17-member council hope to focus and coordinate domestic opposition to the Abacha regime, according to its spokesman Professor Wole SOYINKA, Nigeria's Nobel Prize laureate for literature who was forced into exile in 1994.[Return]

General (rtd) Olusegun OBASANJO—after the assassination of General Murtala Ramat MUHAMMED in February 1976, Obasanjo (a Yoruba) as his Armed Forces Chief of Staff assumed control of the then Supreme Military Council (SMC). When Obasanjo voluntarily handed over power to elected civilians in 1979, he became the only military ruler in Nigerian history to do so. On 13 March 1995, Obasanjo was arrested for treason for allegedly planning a coup against the Abacha regime as well as being part of the opposition movement calling for a return to civilian rule.[Return]

Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade SIJUWADE—most prestigious paramount traditional leader among the Yoruba ethnic groupings in southwestern Nigeria, as Ife is deemed to be the origin of all the Yorubas.

Chief Ernest SHONEKAN—chairman of the Transitional Council, created in January 1993 and composed of military officers and civilian ministers handpicked by General Babangida to assist his transition to civilian government.

Lt-General (rtd) Shehu Musa YAR'ADUA—formerly Chief of Staff under General Obasanjo and retired with him during the 1979 handover of power to civilian rule, zYar'Adua was a major participant in the 1994 National Constitutional Conference. He was subsequently arrested on 10 March 1995 and is still under detention for alleged "coup-plotting" against the Abacha regime.

¹The "Section 419 letter scams", at their most basic, work as follows. Foreign business people are contacted by letter or fax on official stationery of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the government-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, or one of a number of government departments (especially the Department of Defence) with an offer from a Nigerian "senior official" who has received a contract "overpayment" and needs to establish an overseas bank account for the sum, always in the millions, to be sent to. If the foreigner will set up such an overseas account, the senior official will share 30% of the overpayment with them. Then, the senior official begins to need some up-front money to cover various costs within Nigeria and asks the foreigner to send or bring to Nigeria this "administrative sum", usually in the tens of thousands. Once in Nigeria, this sum rises to hundreds of thousands and becomes a condition for the foreigner leaving Nigeria safely. After the foreign funds have been transferred, the senior official either vanishes or, upon being confronted in Nigeria, threatens the "foreign mark" for more money. Based on greed and Nigeria's reputation for massive corruption, the scams continue to work, as all the criminal activity takes place within Nigeria and there is repeated evidence of collusion of Nigerian officials and police with the fraud rings [Time, 18 April 1994 and Report on Business, 25 April 1995].

BBC: Scores die in Nigeria clashes

Monday, 10 September, 2001, Scores die in Nigeria clashes

Reports from the central Nigerian city of Jos says more than 160 people have been killed in three days of violence between Muslims and Christians. Terrified residents described how armed gangs of youths were roaming the streets, attacking members of other communities. Thousands have sought refuge with police, and medical services have battled to cope with the numbers of dead and wounded.

The northern city of Kano has also been hit by an outbreak of communal clashes, with a church set on fire.

An official of the International Red Cross, Phillip Macham, said: "Our records, at this afternoon, show that 165 bodies have been deposited at various hospitals in Jos", but he warned that the final death toll may be even higher.

He said that, in addition, more than 900 had been injured as rival gangs rampaged through the city of four million people.

James Alalade, a pastor of the burnt church in Kano, told Reuters news agency: "They (youths) just came in with their weapons and petrol in cans and asked everybody out before setting the church ablaze. Nobody could stop them, they were heavily armed."

'No link'

Kano has been the scene of more than a dozen violent religious clashes in the past 20 years but police said there was no link to the violence in Jos.

"What happened here (Kano) has nothing to do with the clashes in Jos," said Uba Bello, Kano state police commissioner.

Earlier on Monday, the authorities gave far lower casualty figures for the fighting in Jos, but also acknowledged they were not "final".

An official spokesman put the number of dead at 51 with more than 500 injured since the outbreak of fighting on Friday.

Correspondents say the figure could have been played down for fear of igniting fresh clashes.

Curfew

Churches, mosques, cars and houses were burned down, as the authorities extended a curfew to try to calm the situation.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the military into the city at the weekend, and they appear to have gradually restored order, although small-scale skirmishes have continued.

Thousands of people fled their homes in Jos and sought refuge in military and police compounds when the fighting erupted.

A journalist in Jos, Shehu Sawlawa, told the BBC's Network Africa that, although the presence of the security forces had given some people the confidence to begin returning to their homes, others have been leaving on buses and open top lorries.

President Obasanjo has condemned the violence.

"I wonder what sort of Muslims and Christians start burning churches and mosques - places where God is worshipped?" he asked.

"True believers in God cannot start killing other human beings."

False rumour

The population of Jos is overwhelmingly Christian, but there is a sizeable Muslim community.

The unrest was sparked on Friday by an argument outside a mosque, after which vigilante groups went on the rampage following a false rumour that a Christian church had been burnt down.

There is also an ethnic dimension to the conflict, as many of the fighters on the Christian side are members of the Berom tribe, a group native to Jos.

Fulanis and Hausas - two of Nigeria's largest ethnic groups - make up a large proportion of the Muslims.

Relations between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria have been tense since the introduction of the Sharia Islamic law in 12 states.

In February 2000, more than 2,000 people were killed in religious unrest in Kaduna, and some 450 more Nigerians died in reprisals in the south-east of the country.

NYT: Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures

Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures, Lydia Polgreen, February 24, 2006

ONITSHA, Nigeria, Feb. 23 — Dozens of charred, smoldering bodies littered the streets of this bustling commercial center on Thursday after three days of rioting in which Christian mobs wielding machetes, clubs and knives set upon their Muslim neighbors.

The body of a Muslim victim of the violence lay Thursday outside a ruined mosque as a member of a local gang looked inside. Attacks on Muslims in the south of Nigeria followed attacks on Christians in the north. George Asodi/Associated Press

A mosque in Onitsha was destroyed by Christian rioters.

Rioters have killed scores of people here, mostly Muslims, after burning their homes, businesses and mosques in the worst violence yet linked to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper. The violence in Nigeria began with attacks on Christians in the northern part of the country last week by Muslims infuriated over the cartoons.

Now old ethnic and political tensions between Muslims in the north and Christians here in the south have been reignited, with at least 33 bodies still visible on the streets of Onitsha on Thursday and a local organization that has tried to collect the scattered corpses reporting that it has already picked up 80 others.

The cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian violence has pushed the death toll in the last week well beyond 100, making Nigeria the hardest-hit country so far in the caricature controversy.

The main thoroughfare leading into the city across the Niger River was covered in bodies of Muslim Hausas who had tried to flee rampaging bands of youths, witnesses said. Many of the victims appeared to have been beaten to death; most of the bodies had been doused with gasoline and burned.

Residents combed through the destroyed shops and homes of Muslims, looting whatever the flames had not carried away.

"These things belong to Igbos," said Sunday Tagbo, 25, referring to the dominant ethnic group of this region, more commonly known worldwide as Ibos, as he helped himself to sooty car parts left behind by fleeing merchants. "This is Igbo land. No more Muslims can live here."

City and state officials urged calm, and a semblance of the ordinary returned to the city's streets on Thursday, with markets open and heavy traffic on the streets. But the damage of three days of carnage was evident. At the central mosque, rioters burned the building and hacked down trees surrounding it.

Someone wrote in chalk on a charred wall, "Jesus is Lord." The message went on to warn that "from today" there would be no more Muhammad. Thousands of Muslim residents fled the city, some on foot over the bridge leading to Delta State, taking refuge in neighboring cities. Thousands more huddled in police and army barracks in Onitsha and surrounding towns.

"What has become of us?" lamented the Rev. Joseph Ezeugo, pastor of Immaculate Heart Parish. "This cannot be Nigeria today. We have been living side by side with our Muslim brothers for so long. Why should a cartoon in Denmark bring us to civil war?"

But the cartoons, many political analysts say, were simply a pretext to act on very old grievances rubbed raw by political tensions. Nigeria is entering a period of great political uncertainty in which it must elect a new president to replace Olusegun Obasanjo, who is barred by term limits from running for re-election. Speculation has been rife that he may try to amend the Constitution to run again.

"At the end of the day it is all politics," said Kayode Fayemi, a political scientist and the director of the Center for Democracy and Development, an advocacy group in Nigeria. "Everything else is just pretext."

Conflicts between religious and ethnic groups are common and deadly in Nigeria. In 2002, riots over a beauty contest held in Kaduna in northern Nigeria left more than 200 people dead, and thousands of others have died in such clashes in the last few years.

The most recent cycle began in Borno State, where riots broke out over the Danish cartoons, killing at least 18 people. Muslim rioters burned churches and the homes and businesses of Christians.

In Bauchi State, riots were set off last week when a Christian teacher took a Koran away from a Muslim student who was reading it without permission in class, according to Nigerian newspaper accounts. Muslims were incensed because it is considered a desecration to touch the Koran without performing ritual ablutions. Twenty-five people were killed.

The riots in Onitsha were ignited when a busload of the bodies of Ibo victims of violence in the north returned home earlier this week.

The violence has picked at a very old wound, one inflicted by Nigeria's civil war in the late 1960's, in which Ibo-led insurgents tried to form an independent country called Biafra. The war and the mass starvation it caused killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Some Ibo leaders still nurse a hope that Biafra will be resurrected, and the government recently arrested the leaders of a militant group advocating the re-establishment of an Ibo state. An echo of that sentiment could be seen in graffiti scrawled on a wall here. "This is Biafra," it read. "Rejoice."

The Ibo claim to self-governance is but one of many of the fraying threads in Nigeria's complex quilt of 200 ethnic groups. Tensions between northerners and southerners, and Muslims and Christians, are a staple of Nigeria's contentious political scene, and the nation has always struggled to make sense of its vast diversity.

Its population of roughly 140 million is evenly split between Christians and Muslims, and while most Muslims live in the north and Christians in the south, large numbers of both groups have settled all over the country.

But Ibos nurse particular grudges, making the conflict between them and the Hausas, Muslims who are the dominant group of the north, particularly violent.

"Since 1970 the northerners have been stealing our wealth and ruling us like we are slaves," said Innocent Okafor, a motorcycle taxi driver who brought his 12-year-old son, Jindo, to see the carnage in Onitsha on Thursday, so that he might "know our history and our struggle."

"Thousands of Igbos have died in the north," he said. "So why should some northerners not die here? We must avenge our brothers."

Nation: When did you last eat your tribe?

When did you last eat your tribe?, Lucy Oriang' - the Nation's managing editor in charge of magazines., 2/24/2006

Professor George Saitoti is a man of few words. When he found himself between a rock and a hard place in 2002 at the stadium known more for kisirani than sport, he stepped down with the now-famous "there come a time" speech.

He was at it again the other week, in the wake of the Goldenberg backlash. This time he said he would be concentrating on working with his constituents in a campaign against tribalism.

I hate to rain on your parade, professor, but that’s going to be a rather hard nut to crack, even for a man with a background in mathematics.

In your profession, there’s a formula to ensure everything adds up. In politics, we whip up ethnic chauvinism to defend the indefensible and die for criminals who should be dispatched to the next world.

The question of ethnicity may have been reduced in this country to what my one-time boss Hilary Ng’weno used to call tribal arithmetics (for voting purposes), but it is so complex that it defies any attempt to lock it into any one description.

Bear with me as I tell you a very personal story on this vexed question. Back in 1999 to 2001, I lived with the youngest of my three sisters. She was terminally ill and required a lot of hospital visits at the oddest hours.

It was not always possible for me to keep up with her appointments and emergencies because they sometimes clashed with my deadlines at work. And so we struck a deal with the local taxi guys, who would drop her off and pick her again whenever necessary.

Ferrying her to and fro became a community effort. It didn’t matter that the taxi drivers were all Kikuyu and my family was all Luo. We were bound together by compassion for someone suffering so much.

My sister was a lovely person, inside and outside, and the taxi drivers-turned-friends were heartbroken when she died. They nominated a member of the team to accompany us to her burial.

It was the first time the young man had ever travelled beyond Nakuru, so it would be an adventure in many ways. He carried it off with dignity and said goodbye to his friend in style.

The next scene is set just before the December 2002 General Election. The National Alliance (Party) of Kenya and the Liberal Democratic Party had just agreed an election pact that would see them take on Kanu as one.

With Mwai Kibaki and Michael Wamalwa of NAK indisposed, Raila Odinga was doing much of the legwork urging Kenyans to vote three-piece for the National Rainbow Coalition.

On the eve of the election, the same young man approached us for political advice. He was deeply troubled by the fact that he wanted to vote for Narc but, he confided, he just couldn’t bring himself to vote for a Luo – in this case Odinga himself.

Would it be okay if he just ticked the presidential and councillor boxes and left the MP slot blank? The innocence with which he stated his dilemma was even more confounding than the question.

It is easy to see where Prof Saitoti is coming from. He has a leg each in his ethnic Kikuyu community and among the Maasai, whom he has chosen to identify with. Yet he has to confront this dichotomy with each election.

We are all Kenyans, all human beings, much of the time – and then politics gets into the mix and we are suddenly sharpening our knives to finish off the same neighbour we grew up with.

I fear for the professor. He has an uphill task ahead and there’s little comfort to fall back on as he makes this journey.

This is Africa unmasked, and it is horrendously ugly. It will take a Herculean effort to uproot the tribe from our hearts when it has been tended and fanned into a flame by none other than the victims themselves – even when they are chopping each other to pieces in refugee camps or starving to death.

It would be funny if it didn’t cost us so much to keep up the delusion of ethnic supremacy as an excuse to lie, steal and kill.

We might argue that segregating people into tribes and races is a legacy of the divide-and-rule policy used so effectively by the colonial powers. But no one put a gun to our heads and forced us to pick up where they left off. The Tanzanians chose not to go that way and they've created a nation, not a loose collection of tribes hemmed in by artificial boundaries.

A guy gets elected to the top job here and the first thing he does is surround himself with advisers and praise singers from his own ethnic group. In the quiet of their shacks, his people worry about the need to protect "our" government.

Those not in government are herded into holding pens, awaiting instruction from their own tribal chieftains on which way to vote to ensure their "survival" as a community. You want a job? Easy, all you need is to belong to the right tribe. The tribe has become a bargaining chip or a handicap, depending on where your chieftain stands.

We have become so paranoid that we are constantly looking over our shoulders and dissecting the words of the "enemy" as defined not so much by what we know for a fact as by an accident of birth.

I can just see the wheels turning in your mind right now trying to dig out the hidden agenda that I am fronting. It’s all in the shade of my skin or my thick lips – even my presumably big behind or stick legs. Perhaps you should monitor my calls and establish when I last spoke with the Odingas.

I hear that John Githongo’s ethnic origins are being questioned in some quarters. He’s rather too dark and too huge for a Kikuyu, you see, and there just might well be some Nilotic blood somewhere in the family tree. How else do you explain his ratting on his own people’s government?

Tribal elders travel hundreds of kilometres to the city centre to perform war dances down the hill from State House, just so the occupant on high understands what will happen if he so much as touches one hair on their most famous son’s head, let alone sack him.

And let's not forget the "homecoming" parties when our man gets a Cabinet appointment. Manna will rain down from heaven henceforth. You wish! He'll be keeping all the stupendous allowances, thank you.

I can understand where the powerbrokers are coming from when they sponsor tribal parties with the sole agenda of containing the tribal influence of their bitterest tribal rivals. It’s just fighting fire with fire, and the word tribalist only ever applies to the other side – never to you the accuser. Just remember this when you next point a finger at someone: the other four are pointing at you!

Amazônia: Nível do rio Acre cai após a cheia

Nível do rio Acre cai após a cheia - 23/02/2006

Local: Brasília - DF
Fonte: Correio Braziliense
Link: http://www.correioweb.com.br/

Após 11 dias de enchentes, o nível do Rio Acre, que corta Rio Branco (AC), baixou 14cm, entre a noite de terça-feira e a manhã de ontem. Segundo a prefeitura, o nível do rio desceu de 16,72 para 16,58m. A queda, no entanto, não é motivo de comemoração. Em anos anteriores o nível do rio baixou para subir novamente. Segundo a prefeitura, em 1997 — ano em que foi registrada a maior cheia do Rio Acre—, o nível atingiu 17,66m, caindo para 14,42m para subir novamente para 16,54m. As estimativas apontam que 33.200 pessoas foram atingidas pela cheia. Ao todo, 8.300 imóveis foram afetados pelos alagamentos.

Spiegel: Water Scarcity As Africa's Lakes Shrink

February 22, 2006, Atlas of African Lakes, Water Scarcity As Africa's Lakes Shrink

The rapid decline of Africa's lakes is illustrated dramatically by satellite images from a United Nations Atlas. Many Africans now face a tough future without access to safe drinking water.

The most important freshwater reserves in Africa could be reduced to inhospitable bogs or even completely dry out within a few decades, according to a dramatic report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In its "Atlas of African Lakes" the UNEP has published satellite images of Africa's lakes from decades ago alongside pictures of the lakes as they stand today. The images are dramatic: The water levels of many of Africa's lakes have dropped, some drastically, and the supply of clean drinking water to an exploding population is being endangered. The rapid changes that are sweeping Africa's lakes are due to a combination of human activities and climate change.

Africa has an estimated 677 lakes, holding 30,000 cubic kilometers of water, the largest volume on any continent. Close to 90 percent of water in Africa is used in agriculture, of which 40 to 60 percent is lost to seepage and evaporation, according to the UNEP. The level of Lake Victoria, the largest body of water in Africa, is one meter lower than it was 10 years ago, while Lake Chad has been reduced to one tenth of its original size. Meanwhile Lake Songor in Ghana has also seen its size decrease dramatically -- in its case due to intensive salt production and the resultant evaporation. The potential for disaster is evident as an ever-increasing population faces a scramble for this dwindling resource.
To take just one example, Lake Victoria has some 30 million people living around it, and supports one of the poorest regions in the world with a per capita annual income of $250. Compounding the problem, an average of 1,200 people are crammed into each square kilometer surrounding the lake. This population is expected to increase by another 5 million over the next two decades.

"Lakes are the lifeblood of millions and millions of Africans," the UNEP spokesman Nick Nutall told the BBC. He added "There are huge population pressures on all lake systems in Africa, unless there is some way for people there to find alternative ways of living, they will continue to be under pressure."

The UNEP blames the dramatic reduction in the level of Africa's freshwater lakes on a number of causes: droughts caused by climate change, increased need for drinking water due to increased population numbers, evaporation due to the rapid deforestation and desertification, and inappropriate dam construction.

It is not only the water supply that is being affected but also water quality, as invasive species and pollution from sewage and industrial waste affect the supply of clean drinking water. In addition the size of the catch is being affected by the pollution, overfishing and the introduction of certain species such as perch. The annual catch of freshwater fish in Africa is around 1.4 million tons but this has experienced a drop in many places, particularly in the Nile Delta, Lake Chad and Lake Victoria.

Klaus Toepfer, the UNEP's executive director, speaking at the launch of the Atlas, said "I hope that the images will ring a warning around the world that, if we are to overcome poverty, and meet internationally agreed development goals by 2015, the sustainable management of Africa's lakes must be part of the equation. Otherwise we face increasing tensions and instability as arising populations compete for life's most precious of resources."

The eight Millennium Goals, agreed by world leaders in 2000, included the pledge to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015. This target now seems a long way off.

Amazônia: Rio Acre se aproxima dos 17 metros

Rio Acre se aproxima dos 17 metros - 21/02/2006

Local: Rio Branco - AC
Fonte: Página 20
Link: http://www.pagina20.com.br/

Mais de 7 mil famílias já foram atingidas. Órgãos de Defesa Civil intensificam atendimento a desabrigados

O nível das águas do rio Acre continua subindo. Na última medição feita pela Defesa Civil Municipal na tarde de ontem, a régua estava marcando 16,67 metros, faltando menos de um metro para se igualar à maior cheia que o Estado já registrou, que aconteceu em 1997. Na época o nível das águas do rio chegou a medir 17,66 metros.

Com esse constante aumento, a preocupação da população e das autoridades cresce ainda mais, a cada centímetro que o rio sobe um número maior de pessoas é vítima da enchente. Até ontem, mais de 7 mil famílias já tinham sido atingidas. No bairro Seis de Agosto, onde existe uma régua para medir o nível do rio, a única forma para chegar é por meio de barcos, pois a rua de acesso à régua já foi completamente tomada pelas águas.

Os órgãos municipais e estaduais têm intensificado o trabalho de retirada das famílias, todos os dias aparecem novos voluntários que se solidarizam e ajudam na remoção dos desabrigados.

No bairro Triângulo Novo, um dos locais atingidos pela alagação, duas igrejas já estão servindo de abrigo às vitimas da cheia, uma católica e outra evangélica. Uma delas é a paróquia São José. O lugar, que normalmente é utilizado para a celebração de missas, acabou virando abrigo para as famílias que tiveram suas residências tomadas pela água. Entre as pessoas que se alojaram na paróquia está Ana Paula Urbano, moradora do bairro Triângulo Novo. Ela disse que preferiu ficar na igreja a ir para os abrigos improvisados pela prefeitura devido à menor distância que há entre a igreja e seu trabalho e também pelo fato de conhecer todas as pessoas que ali estão.

A monitora da igreja me convidou e eu aceitei ficar, já que eu trabalho próximo daqui e nesse lugar estou rodeada de parentes e amigos", explicou Ana Paula.

Ana Paula disse ainda que as missas continuam acontecendo, mesmo com a paróquia completamente tomada por móveis e eletrodomésticos. "Alguns dias da semana a monitora da igreja vem nos visitar e rezamos todos juntos pedindo que esta situação difícil acabe logo", ressaltou a desabrigada.

Segundo informações do site www.climatempo.com.br, as previsões continuam sendo de chuvas no decorrer desta semana.


Polícia arma operação para evitar furtos em casas inundadas

Depois de muitas reclamações de furto por parte de moradores que tiveram suas casas alagadas, a polícia armou um esquema para evitar que os roubos continuem acontecendo. O delegado geral da Polícia Civil, Walter Prado, designou uma força-tarefa que vai vasculhar ruas, becos e vielas alcançadas pelas águas o patrulhamento seguirá os moldes do atendimento feito pela policia civil nos finais de semana na capital, acrescido da utilização de barcos.

"Nossa meta é alcançar todos os bairros alagados. Quem for pego nas proximidades de qualquer casa, onde os moradores tiveram que abandoná-las em decorrência da alagação serão levados para a Central de Polícia, disse o delegado. De acordo com Walter, a polícia não vai admitir que larápios possam causar mais danos às famílias que estão sufocadas pelas cheia do rio. Uma das prioridades segundo a polícia, é manter entendimento junto a Justiça para garantir a permanência dos infratores nas Unidades de Segurança Pública até baixar as águas. A polícia sugere como pena aplicação de medidas alternativas, com prestação de serviços à comunidade.

Página 20: Cheia nas cabeceiras do Rio Acre

Cheia nas cabeceiras do Rio Acre, Rio Branco-AC, 18 de janeiro de 2004

Muita chuva em Brasiléia e Xapuri elevou o nível do rio; capital pode sofrer com enchente nos próximos dias

O nível de água na cabeceira do rio Acre continua subindo, para desespero das famílias que moram em áreas alagadiças de Rio Branco. As fortes chuvas que caíram nos últimos três dias em Brasiléia e Xapuri vêm causando cheias nessas localidades e devem desemborcar em Rio Branco nas próximas horas.

O nível ainda não atingiu a sua cota de alerta, que é de 13,5 metros, mas isso não deixa as autoridades e a população tranqüilas, uma vez que o período chuvoso está apenas começando. Ontem de manhã a cota era de 11,84 metros e continuava subindo. Muitos moradores ribeirinhos e de á-reas de risco já protegem como podem suas mobílias e se preparam para deixar suas casas. Diante da situação de perigo iminente, a Defesa Civil se mobiliza para atender qualquer emergência e mantém 20 homens fazendo a cobertura diárea da situação.

O major Fontes, do Corpo de Bombeiros, disse que mais de 15 bairros estão catalogados como área de risco. Ele alerta à população que, no caso de alguma emergência, deve-se entrar em contato com os Bombeiros e a Defesa Civil através dos telefones 193 e 223-1616. “Aconselho o cidadão a ligar para o número de emergência 193 porque, além de ser ligação gratuita, é o número em que se pode mobilizar com urgência as equipes de campo”, explicou o major Fontes.

A última grande enchente que castigou a capital aconteceu em 1997, quando o rio ultrapassou os 17 metros e deixou centenas de desabrigados, além de danificar uma parte do patrimônio público. Enquanto muitos se preocupam em encontrar refúgio para o caso de ter que deixar suas casas, outros aproveitam a situação para ganhar alguns trocados, como é o exemplo dos “catraideiros de improviso”. No bairro Ayrton Senna, onde a cheia chega primeiro, as crianças brincam em canoas ignorando o perigos trazidos pelo lixo e pela a água barrenta. Alguns chegam a ganhar até R$ 30 por dia fazendo o transporte dos adultos que ficam ilhados.

A dona de casa Maria de Fátima reclama que, além do medo de ficar sem teto por conta da alagação, ainda tem que desembolsar dinheiro para se locomover, uma vez que a água já está na porta de sua casa. “Toda vez que eu tiver que sair de casa tenho que pagar 25 centavos para os catraeiros. Se não pagar, vou ter que ir a nado até a parada de ônibus. Mas isso não é nada, o meu medo mesmo é ir trabalhar e, quando voltar, encontrar meus móveis todos debaixo d’água.”

Página 20: Rio Acre chega aos 15 metros em Rio Branco

Rio Acre chega aos 15 metros em Rio Branco

Número de atingidos cresce e Defesa Civil já utiliza Parque de Exposição para alojar desabrigados

O nível das águas do rio Acre, que no último fim de semana ultrapassou a cota de alerta, chegou aos 15 metros na manhã de ontem em Rio Branco. Dez bairros já foram atingidos pela cheia do rio, cerca de 600 famílias foram afetadas e mais de 100 ficaram desalojadas. O aumento no volume de água do rio Acre é em decorrência da vazante que acontece em Brasiléia. Em 24 horas, o rio baixou naquela cidade 1,73 metros.

Entretanto, na capital, a enchente, que começou pelos bairros Ayrton Senna, Adalberto Aragão e Santa Terezinha, ganhou força nesses últimos dias. Os moradores do Ayrton Senna ainda continuam retirando seus móveis tentando evitar a perda de pertences. As pessoas que residem no bairro estão ajudando umas as outras, auxiliando na retirada de objetos e móveis usando canoas. As crianças, sem ter muita noção do perigo que correm, brincam e se divertem nas águas sujas que tomaram conta do local.

O vendedor ambulante Márcio de Oliveira Correia, morador do Ayrton Senna, disse que saiu pela manhã no último domingo para casa de um parente. Quando retornou para a residência onde mora, o nível das águas tinha subido mais de um metro, alagando assim parte do quintal de sua casa. “Eu moro há dois anos aqui e nunca tinha enfrentado uma enchente como esta”, afirmou o vendedor.

Márcio começou a retirar ontem mesmo os móveis de sua casa com a ajuda de um amigo que também mora no bairro e em um gesto solidariedade e companheirismo cedeu sua canoa ao vendedor, que temia um novo aumento no nível das águas, já que a previsão é de mais chuvas em todo o Acre. “Já estou indo para a casa do meu sogro, no bairro Santa Maria, e espero não ter que voltar para o bairro Ayrton Senna. Se alagar na casa do meu sogro, alaga a cidade inteira”, enfatizou.

Moradores temem risco de doenças

Já no bairro Taquari, também atingido pela alagação, os moradores temem o risco de doenças, pois as águas que inundaram algumas ruas do bairro estão completamente sujas e poluídas, aumentando os riscos de contaminação, principalmente a leptospirose, uma vez que já foram registrados alguns casos da doença este ano na capital.

A comerciante Maria do Socorro Neves, que reside na rua Lourival Cordeiro, disse estar preocupada com a saúde dos filhos, por isso rapidamente entrou em contato com a equipe da Defesa Civil Municipal e estava aguardando apenas que a equipe de resgate chegasse até o local para que a família pudesse ser retirada.

Prefeito Angelim garante amparo às famílias

O prefeito de Rio Branco, Raimundo Angelim, concedeu entrevista coletiva na manhã de ontem para anunciar as ações de atendimento e auxílio às famílias desabrigadas pelo alagamento do rio Acre. Ele afirmou que a Defesa Civil Municipal está trabalhando em parceria com várias secretarias da cidade em sistema de plantão 24 horas desde o último sábado e garantiu que a prefeitura vai atender todas as famílias em tempo hábil.

Angelim alertou ainda sobre os riscos de contaminação. “É importante que os pais evitem que as crianças tenham contato com as águas contaminadas para diminuir os riscos de doença como a leptospirose. Os adultos também devem se proteger. Nesse momento o perigo é constante. Estamos trabalhando em todos os sentidos, mas a contribuição da população é essencial para o sucesso do nosso trabalho”, enfatizou o prefeito.

“Temos uma boa informação vinda de Brasiléia, de que o nível das águas do rio diminuiu naquele município, porém, nas proximidades do Riozinho do Rola as águas continuam subindo”, informou Angelim.

O prefeito disse também que o município não decretou estado de calamidade e espera que isso não venha a acontecer. “Estamos tomando todas as providências no intuito de acolher as famílias necessitadas”, completou.

Durante todo o dia de ontem, a Defesa Civil, o Corpo de Bombeiros e vários órgãos do município trabalharam fazendo a remoção de famílias que moram nos locais atingidos pela enchente.

Prefeitura abriga famílias vítimas da alagação

Renata Brasileiro

Pelo menos 200 famílias de Rio Branco foram vitimadas pelo transbordamento do rio Acre, que neste fim de semana atingiu a cota mais alta dos últimos dois anos. Do total, 51 estão abrigadas no Ginásio Coberto, outras dezenas em casas de parentes e as demais estão sendo levadas para o Parque de Exposições, cujo local foi preparado na manhã de ontem pela prefeitura de Rio Branco, em razão de o espaço do ginásio ter sido insuficiente para comportar a grande demanda.

Essa é a primeira vez que autoridades públicas recorrem a outro local a fim de abrigar famílias de bairros alagadiços. Segundo a secretária de Assistência Social, Stefânia Pontes, responsável por administrar os alojamentos, os galpões do parque estão sendo adequados ao sistema de boxes para que as famílias tenham o mínimo de conforto e privacidade enquanto suas casas estiverem alagadas.

“A princípio, estamos construindo 100 boxes, mas caso haja necessidade, nossa equipe está preparada para implantar outros 100. Espaço nós temos e nenhuma família necessitada ficará sem abrigo”, ressaltou.

Com a subida repentina das águas do rio, já estão alagados os bairros Seis de Agosto, Ayrton Senna, Taquari, Baixada da Habitasa, Adalberto Aragão e Cadeia Velha.

Shirley de Araújo, 38, conta que em sua casa, no Cadeia Velha, a água chegou a cobrir a geladeira. O eletrodoméstico foi uma das grandes perdas materiais que a dona de casa teve. O guarda-roupa, onde ela guarda os pertences de toda a família - dela, do marido e de três filhos -, também está danificado. “Mas ainda dá para reaproveitar”, comenta ela.

“A minha geladeira eu deixei lá debaixo d’água porque vimos que ela não vai mais funcionar. As outras coisas, mesmo danificadas, trouxemos para cá”, diz.

Shirley está com a família no Ginásio Coberto desde domingo. Para ela, a alagação deste ano está se apresentando tão perigosa quanto a de 1997, quando o rio atingiu sua cota mais alta. “Eu nem esperava que minha casa fosse alagar, pois nos últimos dois anos não fomos atingidos. Quando vi a água chegando no meu assoalho foi que percebi que a situação seria grave.”

Assim como as demais famílias, no Ginásio Coberto a família de Shirley tem acesso a banheiros, cozinha com fogão, uma lavanderia improvisada e até atividades recreativas para as crianças. “Nossa intenção é iniciar atendimentos médicos o mais rápido possível, além de cursinhos de alimentação saudável e alternativa”, complementou a secretária.

Forças unidas

Além da Secretaria Municipal de Assistência Social, outras secretarias e entidades ligadas ao município e ao governo estão unidas na missão de manter a segurança das famílias atingidas pela alagação.

Homens do Corpo de Bombeiros, juntamente com os da Defesa Civil, por exemplo, estão fazendo a remoção das famílias e levando-as para os alojamentos ou casas de parentes.

Durante todo o dia de ontem, equipes estavam atuando nos bairros mais atingidos. O Taquari era um dos que estavam sob os cuidados dos órgãos, em razão de a água de dois igarapés daquela localidade terem represado a água do rio.

Por esse motivo, as casas estavam alagando com mais rapidez e pelo menos 60 famílias aguardavam ajuda com suas casas quase submersas.

“Nem consigo mais entrar na minha casa. A água está batendo no ombro”, disse a dona de casa Maria Gomes da Silva, que não conseguiu retirar a tempo a mobília.

“Estou preocupada. Espero que minha perda não tenha sido muito grande.”

Amazônia: Prefeitura de Rio Branco inicia resgate de famílias desabrigadas

18/02 Prefeitura de Rio Branco inicia resgate de famílias desabrigadas
Por: Redação amazonia.com.br

Desde o último sábado, a Defesa Civil Municipal começou os trabalhos de resgate e transporte de famílias desabrigadas pela enchente. Na capital Rio Branco, os bairros mais atingidos pela cheia do Rio Acre são o Airton Senna, Seis de Agosto e Taquari.

A maioria das famílias retiradas das áreas atingidas foi deslocada para residências de amigos ou parentes. Apenas uma foi levada no início da manhã de ontem para se alojar no Barracão do Quinze. A limpeza e adequação do local já foram providenciadas pela administração municipal.

A Prefeitura disponibilizou os telefones 212-7095 e 212-7096 para atender as famílias desabrigadas, entre 7h e 18h.