Nigeria in 2004
Nigeria in 2004
Area: 923,768 sq km (356,669 sq mi)
Population (2004 est.): 128,254,000
Capital: Abuja
Head of state and government: President Olusegun Obasanjo
Several bouts of violence and civil unrest plagued Nigeria throughout 2004 and threatened to collapse the country’s fragile democracy. The overwhelming victory by the ruling People’s Democratic Party in the March municipal elections was marred by allegations of fraud and by violent clashes at polling stations that claimed some 50 lives. In April several military officers were arrested after a plan to oust Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo was foiled.
During much of the year, religious violence preoccupied Nigeria, which had not experienced such heightened unrest since similar bouts of religious conflict occurred in 2001. During the first three months, 350 people were killed and thousands were displaced by the clashes. In May the government declared a state of emergency in Plateau state following religious-based violence that left more than 1,000 persons dead and 70,000 displaced. Christian militias in six Plateau villages attacked mosques and killed an estimated 600 people and left more than 1,000, mostly Muslims, wounded; the most horrific atrocities occurred in Yelwa. These attacks led to reprisals by Muslims in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, where an estimated 600 people, predominately Christians, were killed. Moreover, many observers emphasized that the violence could not be attributed to religion alone and that the causes were complex. Land disputes between Tarok farmers and Fulani cattle herders were cited as one of the causes. Similar but smaller religious attacks occurred in early June in Numan, near the Cameroon border. Two police crackdowns on antigovernment protests in Abuja and Lagos led to the arrests of more than 200 demonstrators, including Nobel laureate playwright and novelist Wole Soyinka. More than 10,000 people had died in religious, ethnic, and political clashes since 1999, when Nigeria officially ended 15 years of military rule. In August Swiss authorities agreed to release $500 million of former dictator Sani Abacha’s assets that were being held in a Swiss bank.
Kano state was hit hard by a serious polio outbreak that swept across nine West and Central African countries and was believed to have originated in Nigeria. The Kano state government refused to participate in the immunization program led by the World Health Organization, citing that the shots were unsafe. The boycott resulted in 257 polio-afflicted Nigerian children’s becoming paralyzed. (See Health: Sidebar.)
Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger delta was fraught with continued violence and targeted attacks on oil-production sites. Fighting between ethnic militias left more than 12 people dead in January, and at least 5 persons were killed in March. In September the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) threatened war on the Nigerian government and warned the oil companies that they should leave. The crisis deepened later that month when violence peaked in Port Harcourt, leaving close to 500 people dead. That same month 50 people were killed in a pipeline explosion near Lagos. In October union leaders staged a four-day oil strike that virtually shut down Lagos, and the NDPVF surrendered many weapons to the government as part of a money-for-guns exchange.
Several foreign oil companies operating in Nigeria faced lawsuits and continued attacks, as a result of ongoing conflict over land and extraction rights. The U.S.-based oil multinational ChevronTexaco suspended operations in April after seven people, including two of its workers, were killed in an attack. Oil giant Shell, dogged by investigations after having admitted that it had falsified oil-reserve estimates, was sued by the Nigerian government for £840 million (about $1.55 billion) for the environmental damage it had caused in the Niger delta. The company had a bitter history in Nigeria owing to allegations of oil spills, security-force brutality, and corruption. American oil-services company Halliburton was under investigation as part of a $180 million bribery case that alleged that the company had funneled bribes to local officials from 1995 to 2000.
by: Mary F.E. Ebeling