SummaryIn July and August 2007, warring gangs in Port Harcourt—the capital of Nigeria’s Rivers State—unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence against the city and its people. Gangs fought pitched battles in the streets with automatic weapons, explosives, machetes, and broken bottles. These groups opened fire at random on crowds, gunning down scores of terrified civilians in the streets. People who had been walking home from work on ordinary afternoons suddenly lay dying on the operating tables of nearby clinics. Families have been left struggling to understand why their loved ones were so senselessly murdered. During a six-week period beginning July 1, escalating gang violence saw several dozen people killed and scores more wounded in Port Harcourt’s streets. Many victims were ordinary Nigerians who were either caught in the crossfire between rival gangs or deliberately shot by gang members. People were killed as they got off buses, sat drinking at local cafes, or tried to flee as gunfire erupted around them. In one case, a young girl and her parents were shot dead as they returned from an all-night church service. In another, seven people including a bread seller and truck driver were shot dead on their way to work. In addition to violence in Port Harcourt itself, gang violence spread to other Rivers State communities. In the worst-affected communities like Ogbogoro, cult gangs carried out a reign of terror that included murder, rape, and other violent crimes. This was no random explosion of violence. The bloodshed was a widely predicted aftershock of Nigeria’s rigged and violent April 2007 nationwide elections. Most of the gangs involved in the July and August fighting gained experience and power as the hired guns of Rivers State politicians, who used them to rig elections and intimidate political opponents. The clashes between the groups primarily represented a violent competition for access to illegal patronage doled out by public officials in the state government. Since the end of military rule in 1999, democracy in Nigeria has been illusory, with elections stolen openly and voters systematically intimidated into acquiescence. Hundreds of Nigerians died in the course of sham elections in 2003 and 2007. The governments that seized power through those fraudulent exercises have shown little sense of accountability to their constituents. The conduct of Rivers State’s politicians has sunk even lower than these dismal norms. The violence described in this report was the inevitable result of actions by Rivers’ public officials. Rivers State’s government is the wealthiest state government in Nigeria. That position is derived from Rivers’ status as the heart of Nigeria’s booming oil industry. Rising world oil prices in recent years have flooded Rivers State’s treasury with a budget larger than those of many West African countries. In spite of this wealth, Rivers has some of the worst socioeconomic indicators in the world—its people lack access to employment, education, health care, and other basic needs. Instead of putting its massive oil revenues to work developing the state for the benefit of the entire population, Rivers’ politicians have largely squandered the money through mismanagement and corruption. Ironically, the young men attracted into well funded gang activity because of poverty and unemployment are helping to fuel the same problems responsible for their lack of opportunities in the first place. But Rivers’ wealth has not just been squandered; it has also been put to work sponsoring violence and insecurity on behalf of ruling party politicians. Prior to the 2003 elections, then-Governor Peter Odili and his political associates lavishly funded criminal gangs that helped rig the election into a landslide victory for the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Those gangs used the money at their disposal to procure sophisticated weapons; some of them are now better armed than the police. Over the years, gangs initially sponsored by Rivers politicians have become involved in other forms of lucrative criminal activity, including the theft of crude oil, bank robbery, kidnappings for ransom, and other violent crimes. In large part due to their political connections, these gangs have committed crimes with near-total impunity. The police have made no serious effort to press criminal charges against or apprehend any significant gang leader, even though several of them have lived openly in urban areas where their violent crimes resulted in murder and injury to ordinary Nigerians. Rivers’ most powerful gang leader, Soboma George, escaped from jail while awaiting trial for murder in 2005 but the police made no effort to re-arrest him. When he was picked up on a traffic violation in 2007, armed men broke him out of a police station and he was again left untouched by police and law alike. Some of the same gang leaders sponsored by Rivers politicians are at the heart of the violence described in this report. Much of the July and August 2007 fighting pitted Ateke Tom, leader of the Icelanders/Niger Delta Vigilante group, against Soboma George, leader of the Outlaws gang. Ateke Tom rose from obscurity during Rivers’ 2003 elections when he was paid and armed by state government officials to help drive opposition supporters out of his hometown of Okrika. Soboma George emerged from Rivers’ 2007 elections as the state’s most powerful and politically connected gang leader, with close ties to the administration of Rivers then-Governor Celestine Omehia. Soboma George enjoyed such a dominant position in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 election that many other gang leaders felt that they had been unfairly excluded from sources of government largesse to which they had grown accustomed. Many of the events documented in this report were part of an organized attempt by Ateke and other gang leaders to violently protest what they saw as Soboma’s unfair monopoly on illegal access to Rivers’ treasury. By demonstrating a capacity to cause mayhem and plunge Port Harcourt into violence, they apparently hoped to force the government to allocate more patronage to them. Rivers’ post-election gang warfare spiraled so far out of control that the federal government ordered the military-led Joint Task Force (JTF)—a combined force of police, military, and State Security Service (SSS) personnel that operates in the Niger Delta—to intervene and stop it. The JTF quickly succeeded in restoring order to Port Harcourt and other communities that had been overwhelmed by gang violence. Their presence on the streets of Port Harcourt brought a palpable sense of relief from a population weary from escalating violence. They have since managed to maintain a degree of relative and fragile peace, though they have not managed to stamp out gang violence altogether. The JTF’s intervention has failed in many ways, however. Its forces perpetrated serious abuses against the same citizens supposedly under their protection. JTF personnel have shot civilians dead with no justification, arbitrarily detained and beaten others, and looted the homes of people in communities that had looked to them for security. Overall, however, the conduct of JTF forces has been more restrained and respectful of human rights than has been the case in the past. Unfortunately, the JTF’s positive actions have not been backed with the political will at any level of government to address obvious underlying causes of the violence. The national government of President Umaru Yar’Adua came into office promising a robust and comprehensive effort to end violence in the Niger Delta and to produce economic opportunities for the region’s disaffected population. So far this has been shown a hollow promise, with federal government action limited to ham-fisted attempts at organizing peace conferences and no effort to acknowledge or address the real roots of chronic violence in Rivers and other states. The failure of the police has also been especially egregious. Overall the force has failed completely to meet its responsibility to protect Rivers’ citizens from violence, and to investigate and arrest those implicated. More fundamentally, neither the police nor government at the state or federal level has initiated investigations into the links between leading Rivers politicians and gang violence. At this writing, a relative degree of peace has been restored to Port Harcourt and other parts of Rivers State. However, in spite of the JTF’s presence, kidnappings and other forms of cult violence have continued to claim lives in early 2008: during the first 10 weeks of 2008 armed gangs kidnapped more than a dozen people for ransom in Rivers State, including two young children. The status quo is not sustainable; the problem has been bottled up but will inevitably explode anew unless those most responsible for generating the violence are held to account. Human Rights Watch calls upon Nigeria’s federal government and police to conduct criminal investigations targeted at all Rivers State government officials credibly linked to sponsorship of armed gangs, including former governors Peter Odili and Celestine Omehia. Anti-corruption officials should move forward with corruption investigations related to the activities of those same officials; it is official corruption that makes possible the arming and financial sponsorship of criminal gangs. Many existing corruption investigations appear to have been placed on hold for political reasons. Additionally, the new Rivers State government under Governor Rotimi Amaechi should launch a transparent and impartial public inquiry into links between politics, corruption, and violence in Rivers State and it should ensure that the current administration is free of politicians linked to the creation and continuation of those problems. |