Nigeria seizes Separatist militants in broader crackdown

[Xudeedi]

Nigeria seizes separatist militants in broader crackdown

 

Thu Oct 27, 4:07 PM ET

 

Nigerian security forces have detained three of the country's most powerful militant leaders, officials said, as part of an apparent crackdown on the separatist forces threatening to tear Africa's most populous country apart.

In Lagos a magistrate ordered that two rival leaders of the Odua People's Congress (OPC) -- an illegal armed faction set up to defend the interests of the Yoruba ethnic group -- be held in prison while police prosecutors prepare to charge them with inciting murder and riots.

Meanwhile, secret police have raided the fortified compound of ethnic Igbo separatist leader Ralph Uwazuruike and are holding him incommunicado in the federal capital Abuja, according to a legal adviser to his Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).

The arrests came one month after police detained Niger Delta warlord Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari, who campaigns for the independence of the Ijaw people and their oil-rich homeland, and then also briefly held ethnic Ogoni rights activist Ledum Mittee for questioning.

"It appears that government is really cracking down on perceived members of the opposition. It is reminiscent of the military diktat and high-handedness the present government is practising," said political activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, who supports the idea of regional autonomy.

The crackdown also came as Nigerians nervously watch the build up to the 2007 election.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has led the country since the end of military rule in 1999, is due to step down at the end of two four-year terms.

If he honours his promise to do so, he will be replaced by whoever comes out on top after the next 18 months of what is expected to be bitter political warfare.

The last poll in 2003 was widely seen has having been rigged by Obasanjo's ruling party. Anger over this has led to increased agitation for self-determination from the larger of the 250 ethnic groups making up Nigeria's 130-million-strong population.

Many of their leaders argue that Nigeria was artificially created by the country's former colonial power Britain and that more authority must be devolved to the regions and to the Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw and the country's other main peoples.

But Obasanjo, who fought on the victorious federal side against Biafran rebels in Nigeria's 1967-70 civil war, opposes any move to weaken Nigerian unity.

His supporters and some foreign observers fear that if the federal state loosens its grip the country could disintegrate into chaos as many west and central African countries have done before.

Uwazuruike "was arrested by the State Security Service (SSS) at his home in his village. He was arrested late on Tuesday. Yesterday they flew him from Port Harcourt to Abuja, where he is being held," MASSOB lawyer Uche Okwukwu told AFP.

MASSOB has demanded that the ethnic Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria be allowed to split from the federation and form an independent homeland of its own; a revived Biafra.

Pro-Biafran activists have stepped up their demands and in recent months have taken a number of provocative steps; holding strikes in eastern cities, staging marches under the Biafran banner and circulating banknotes minted in the short-lived rebel republic.

Frederick Faseun and Gani Adams -- veteran militants and rivals for the leadership of the banned OPC -- appeared amid tight security with nine other group members at Igbosere Magistrates Court.

Dozens of armed police equipped with armoured personnel carriers stood guard around the courthouse, and four truckloads of officers carrying assault rifles escorted the prison van through a 200-strong crowd of protesters as the suspects were taken back to jail.

Enmity between Adams and Faseun spilled over into violence last week when gangs from their rival factions battled for control of lucrative bus and taxi routes. Between three and 12 people were killed and dozens of buses burnt out in the fighting.

The prosecutor said the suspects would be charged with conspiracy to murder, murder, malicious property damage, rioting, unlawful assembly, causing fear to members of the public by bearing weapons, arson and leading an illegal association.

Magistrate Akintunde Isaacs remanded the OPC suspects in custody and adjourned the hearing until November 21.