IRIN Focus on moves to outlaw ethnic and militia bodies

Over the past three years, Nigeria has recorded an unusually high number of deaths from various internal conflicts. At least 10,000 people have died from unprecedented waves of violent ethnic and religious unrest that "have threatened to burst Africa's most populous country at the seams since 1999", says political scientist Uche Nwokike. "This figure is conservative and is based on tallies made from cases that have been reported in the media," Nwokike, a researcher at the University of Nigeria, told IRIN. "There are a significant number of incidents that go unreported or get reported late with many deaths not taken into account." At the centre of the violence are the various ethno-religious militia groups that have emerged in the country since President Olusegun Obasanjo's election in 1999 which ended more than 15 years of military rule. If Obasanjo has his way and a bill he recently sent to the legislature is passed, the groups that have sprouted all over the country claiming to represent rival ethnic, religious and sectional interests will be outlawed. The Prohibition of Certain Associations Act 2002 seeks the power to ban any "association of individuals or quasi-military groups" formed "for the purpose of furthering the political, religious, ethnic, tribal, cultural or social interests of a group" in a manner contrary to peace and order in the country. There are obvious targets of this definition. One is the Oodua People's Congress (OPC) which claims to defend the interests of Yoruba people, one of Nigeria's biggest ethnic groups. It has been involved in much of the violence in the commercial capital, Lagos, and other parts of the southwest between Yorubas and Hausa-speaking communities, which were originally from the north. There is also the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), which seeks to revive the secessionist state created in 1967 in the southeast by the Igbo - another of the main ethnic groups - and defeated after three years of civil war in 1970. Another group in the southeast whose activities have been a cause for concern is the anti-crime vigilante group known as Bakassi Boys, which engages in extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals. This group has the backing of a number of state governments in the southeast. Another potential target of the bill is a militia known as the Egbesu Boys of Africa, comprising members of the Ijaw people of the Niger Delta. The Egbesu Boys have been involved in much of the violence that has rocked the oil-producing southern region in recent years. Several other armed groups affiliated to the Delta's numerous ethnic minorities have been part of the turf wars that have claimed scores of lives in recent years and disrupted oil activities in the region. The government is equally worried about the activities of the various militia groups involved in the violence that tore through much of central Nigeria last year. The most notorious of these incidents involved the Tiv and the Jukun communities and cost several hundred lives. The Nigerian army was drawn in when 19 soldiers were killed by a Tiv militia and soldiers retaliated by ransacking several Tiv villages, killing about 200 civilians. Also of concern to Obasanjo's government are the activities of Islamic vigilantes in the predominantly Muslim states of the north that have adopted Islamic law over the past two years. These groups have often spearheaded violent conflicts with Christians and other non-Muslims that have occurred in several northern cities. Apart from the militants, the bill also aims to neutralise other organisations whose membership includes prominent politicians and which purport to represent ethnic or sectional interests. Among these are the Yoruba Afenifere, the Igbo Ohaneze and the Arewa Consultative Forum, which claims to represent northern interests. Also falling into the same basket are a host of bodies created by ethnic minorities such as the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and the Ijaw National Congress (INC). Obasanjo has accused these groups of being the inspiration behind the militants, and said it is necessary to prohibit their activities to deal effectively with Nigeria's ethnic and religious conflicts. "The President may be right, but by proposing to ban these groups he would only be trying to deal with the symptoms without touching the disease itself," Bola Oyeneye, a political analyst, told IRIN. "The problem with Nigeria is that it is a British colonial creation and after more than 40 years of nationhood many of the component groups, with nothing to show for their membership of the union after decades of misrule, are questioning its very basis." Indeed, many of these ethnic and sectional groupings have been in the forefront of demands for political restructuring and devolution of power away from the centre to the component groups. Organisations like MOSOP and INC believe decentralisation will give them more access and control over the oil wealth produced in their area. Others, such as the Yoruba and Igbo organisations, believe it will give them the political space to achieve genuine self-determination. But Obasanjo has never hidden his contempt for demands to change the political structure of Nigeria. It is widely believed that this political stance won him the support of key political players in the north - the region that has produced Nigerian rulers for 30 out of the 40 years since independence from Britain. Their support enabled him to win the 1999 presidential election despite losing in his Yoruba home region. Many of his critics believe his moves to ban the ethnic and militia groups are aimed at strengthening his hand during his second term in office if he wins next year's elections. However, the signs are that if the bill survives a difficult process through the legislature, its implementation will stir more resentment. A group describing itself as the Coalition of Oodua Self-determination Groups, which includes the OPC and other smaller pro-Yoruba groups, issued a defiant statement in reaction to the propose bill. "We have always maintained that our minimum agenda is the restructuring of Nigeria to achieve true federalism ... our maximum agenda being the attainment of the status of a republic," said the statement. It added: "As far as we are concerned...we are political organisations fighting for the liberation of the Yoruba from the clutches of Anglo-Caliphate [British and northern Nigerian]imperialists, not ethnic militias."