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Focus on the deployment of troops in Odi

[This IRIN report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] The destruction of the town of Odi in Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta after the deployment of troops there to arrest the killers of 12 policemen has drawn widespread condemnation from human rights and pro-democracy groups. "They were not going to maintain peace. They were going for war," Oliver Onwubunta, information officer for the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Port Harcourt, told IRIN. A group of some 35 Nigerian human rights organisations, known as the Odi Coalition against Genocide, has called for an international war crimes tribunal to be created to try those responsible for the alleged atrocities in Odi. At a news conference on 8 December the Coalition charged that graffiti such as "We will kill all Ijaws" and "Bayelsa will be silent forever" left on the walls of destroyed buildings in Odi confirmed the soldiers' genocidal state of mind. On 21 December, US-based Human Rights Watch called on the Nigerian government to initiate criminal proceedings against soldiers responsible for committing abuses in Odi. Following an assessment by a team of senators which expressed shock at the scale of destruction there, Nigeria's lower house of parliament adopted a motion on 30 November that government must in future seek national assembly approval before deploying troops to quell civil unrest. On 29 November, Doyin Okupe, President Olusegun Obasanjo's spokesman, said that the trouble in the Niger Delta was not being perpetrated by civil agitators but by a "dangerous band of psychopathic merciless mercenaries". "The deployment of troops to Bayelsa was an inevitable step taken under very serious constraints on the part of the federal government," Okupe said. Turner Isoun, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Science and Technology, who has owned a home in Odi for 17 years, disagrees. "The military option was not the only option available," Isoun told IRIN. "The Government had many options. They could have declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Odi to prevent movement, they could have declared a state of emergency on Odi town or they could have sent in some crack policemen in mufti, including Ijaw policemen, to go and fish out those boys." In an interview with IRIN on 19 December, Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha said the military were responsible for the destruction in Odi, that the identity of the police killers was known but they were still at large in Port Harcourt. On 14 December Col. Felix Chukwuma, Director of Army Public Relations, told reporters that the destruction of Odi was brought about by the exchange of fire between "heavily armed and mobilised youths". He added: "In any internal security operation the job of keeping the peace is done with minimal force because we know that there would be old men, old women and children in such a place. "But when our men got to Odi they were attacked with heavy weapons using these old people as shields. The troops had to go back, reorganise and match force with force, while also engaging in house searches to free the old people from being used as shields from these armed youths." This assertion is firmly refuted by some Odi residents. "The allegation that Odi youths or criminals used old women as shields from the houses is an absolute lie," Isoun told IRIN. "The houses were systematically destroyed by the troops deployed to Odi and the government is trying to create reasons for actions that do not fit the facts. "There is no evidence that the Odi community was giving support to these Ijaw youths who killed the policemen. Even if the Odi community were harbouring the police killers government should not declare war against the community," said Mofia Akobo, chairman of the Southern Minorities Movement, which represents all ethnic groups in six states in the Niger Delta. Some argue that the deployment of the military was an acceptable response to the situation in Odi but that the way that they behaved was not. "I have no objection to the military being sent in," Peter Ozo-Eson, Director of Projects for the Centre of Advanced Social Sciences, a Port Harcourt think-tank, which is involved in conflict analysis, told IRIN. "Given the kidnapping of the policemen and the way they were killed it would not have been a solution to send in more policemen, as they are not normally well-armed. You have to maintain law and order. "The problem is the way the army executed their mandate as they seemed to have a mission to destroy. This is not a war," Ozo-Eson added. "As the president is a military man his instinct is to seek for quick solutions and he does not always use due process." Others say the federal government's response to Odi is inconsistent with its policy in other parts of Nigeria, where the army does not send in troops when policemen are killed. Akobo said at least 12 policemen have been killed in different situations in Lagos but "no one thinks that these killings were done by a committee of Lagosians or that a state of emergency should be declared". Others wonder whether the military would be better utilised in the north to deal with armed bandits, suspected to be Chadians, and militant herdsmen from Niger. Some analysts believe that the military intervention Odi was premeditated. The government's decision in October to relocate soldiers originally from troubled areas in the Niger Delta to other parts of Nigeria to prevent them becoming part of the problem was, human rights organisations say, a signal of its desire to crack down on dissent and adopt a tougher policy in the region. "The federal government knew that the criminals they were looking for were not in Odi at the time that they went in," a spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council, Isaac Osuoka, told IRIN. "They went there to demonstrate that the Nigerian army had the capacity to kill. The whole area was smelling of corpses after the army left," he added. On 25 November, Defence Minister Theophilus Danjuma reportedly said at a ministerial conference that the Odi operation was initiated with the mandate of protecting lives and property "particularly oil platforms, flow stations, operating rig terminals and pipelines refineries and power installation in the Niger Delta". Human rights organisations said in their 8 December statement: "It was for oil and oil alone that the soldiers who are today maintained with oil money from Odi and other communities of the Niger Delta went to Odi to commit those atrocities." "In other parts of Nigeria, among the ruling elite, there is strong anxiety that the threat of activism in the Niger Delta could stop the flow of oil, the lifeblood of the economy," a media source in Lagos told IRIN. "The Odi clampdown was to demonstrate that the federal government means business." "The reason for the deployment was to break the spirit of the Ijaw people," Isoun told IRIN. "This attitude can only push what has been a peaceful protest to an armed struggle. If this happens they will not get one drop of oil from the Niger Delta. "America went to Vietnam and lost and the Vietnam delta is only one-third of the size of the Niger Delta!"

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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