Amnesty International Report 1998 - Nigeria

(This report covers the period January-December 1997)   Hundreds of prisoners of conscience and possible prisoners of conscience, including human rights defenders, were imprisoned during the year. Most were detained without charge or trial; others had been convicted in unfair political trials. There were reports of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, and at least two prisoners of conscience died as a result of prison conditions so harsh as to amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. People with links to the political opposition or human rights groups were attacked and threatened, allegedly by government agents. At least 43 prisoners were sentenced to death and 33 executed. Local government and state assembly elections took place as part of the transition to civilian rule promised by the military government of General Sani Abacha and scheduled for completion by October 1998. However, the new Constitution recommended by a part-elected Constitutional Conference in 1995 had still not been published by the end of the year. Local government elections in March were marred by the disqualification, before and after election, of candidates perceived to support the excluded pro-democracy opposition, and by fraud, vote-rigging and corruption. Security police again screened candidates for state assembly elections in December. Elections for state governors were postponed until 1998. The government continued to obstruct fact-finding visits by intergovernmental organizations (see Amnesty International Report 1997). In March the UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a critical resolution, appointing a Special Rapporteur to keep the human rights situation in Nigeria under scrutiny. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in October maintained the suspension of Nigeria's membership of the Commonwealth which was imposed after the 1995 Ogoni executions (see Amnesty International Report 1996). The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights sent a fact-finding delegation to Nigeria in March, but by the end of the year had not made known any of its findings or recommendations. There were sporadic bomb attacks by unidentified perpetrators, directed mainly at military targets, in which several people were killed. The authorities accused the opposition grouping, the National Democratic Coalition (nadeco), of responsibility and in March charged 16 people with treason, including pro-democracy and human rights activists (see below). The relocation of two local government headquarters led to scores of deaths in communal unrest between March and July around Warri, where oil-workers were taken hostage and a military taskforce sent in; and from August in Osun State where hundreds were displaced. In December the government announced that it had thwarted a coup attempt by the deputy head of state and other senior armed forces officers (see below). Numerous meetings organized by human rights or pro-democracy groups were forcibly broken up by the security police. The authorities imposed restrictions on government critics and human rights activists by seizing their passports or briefly detaining them. Hundreds of prisoners of conscience and possible prisoners of conscience were detained, many without charge or trial. They included human rights defenders, journalists, members of pro-democracy and Islamist opposition groups, trade unionists, politicians, soldiers and relatives of political prisoners. Among the prisoners of conscience held without trial was Moshood Abiola, winner of the 1993 presidential elections. He had been imprisoned since June 1994, ostensibly awaiting trial for treason, and denied access to his family and lawyers (see previous Amnesty International Reports) In March the authorities charged 16 people, including leading pro-democracy and human rights activists, with treason, a capital offence. The 12 imprisoned in Nigeria included Dr Frederick Fasehun, Acting Chairman of the Campaign for Democracy (cd), and Olu Falae, a former government minister and member of nadeco. Four exiles were charged including writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and nadeco leader retired General Alani Akinrinade. Relatives and employees of General Akinrinade were arrested in January and February and detained without charge for several weeks. Among them was Dr Adegbenga Adebusuyi who was subsequently charged with treason and was reported to have been hung by his feet and kicked in the head. Leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition group in northern Nigeria, were charged in July with inciting public disaffection and sedition; they had been detained incommunicado for 10 months (see Amnesty International Report 1997). Their trial started in October but had not concluded by the end of the year. They included Ibrahim Yakub Al-Zakzaky, an Islamic scholar and preacher, whose family were reportedly driven from their home by the security forces, and Hamid Danlami, publisher of the Muslim Brotherhood's newspaper. A group of 20 Ogoni prisoners continued to be held without trial on identical murder charges to those used to execute Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni in November 1995. Many said they had been tortured or severely beaten after their arrests in 1994, and all were ill, some seriously, as a result of insanitary prison conditions and lack of food or medical treatment (see previous Amnesty International Reports). Other prisoners of conscience and possible prisoners of conscience were held without charge. Two oil workers' leaders remained detained without charge for their involvement in a two-month strike by oil workers in 1994. Frank Ovie Kokori and Milton G. Dabibi were denied visits by lawyers or union colleagues, and in May 1997 Frank Kokori's home was reportedly looted and his wife and son threatened by unidentified assailants after his wife made a public appeal for his release. Prison doctors recommended that Frank Kokori receive medical treatment for a spinal injury, but the authorities refused to allow it. Chief Olabiyi Durojaiye, a 63-year-old lawyer and founding member of nadeco who had been arrested in December 1996, was held incommunicado throughout the year without explanation. He was held in solitary confinement, and was reported to have become haggard and disoriented as a result of the harsh conditions. Scores of journalists were detained, usually for short periods, throughout the year. Moshood Fayemiwo, publisher of the Razor news magazine, was reportedly abducted by Nigerian security agents from neighbouring Benin in February and subsequently detained in an underground cell at a Directorate of Military Intelligence detention facility in Lagos In October and November, some 30 journalists were arrested in a crack-down on the opposition press. Those who were still detained, incommunicado and without charge or trial, at the end of the year included Soji Omotunde, editor of the African Concord magazine, and Babafemi Ojudu, managing editor of the newspaper group The News. Foday Sankoh, leader of the Revolutionary United Front, an armed political group in Sierra Leone, was arrested in Lagos in March, reportedly for possession of arms and ammunition. He was still detained under house arrest without charge or trial at the end of the year In December the Deputy Head of State, Lieutenant-General Oladipo Diya, was arrested with 10 other officers and a civilian. The government said that they had plotted to overthrow the government. They had not been charged and were still held incommunicado at the end of the year. Officials warned journalists not to speculate about whether there really had been a coup plot, making reference to the imprisonment for treason in 1995 of four journalists who had reported the fabrication of evidence and grossly unfair trials of treason suspects. Prisoners of conscience convicted of treason in secret and grossly unfair military trials in 1995 continued to be held (see Amnesty International Report 1996). Those sentenced to long prison terms included political leaders, such as retired General Olusegun Obasanjo, Head of State from 1976 to 1979, and human rights campaigners Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti and Shehu Sani, cd Chairman and Deputy Chairman respectively. Four editors and journalists were among this group; they included Kunle Ajibade and Chris Anyanwu. Eleven soldiers continued to be held despite an announcement by the military authorities that they had been released (see Amnesty International Report 1997), and despite an order for the release of seven of them in July by the Federal High Court in Lagos. They had been convicted of involvement in a 1990 coup attempt following unfair and secret military trials. Torture and ill-treatment of political and criminal suspects by soldiers and police at the time of arrest and to extract confessions were routine. Scores of supporters of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (mosop) were allegedly arrested, beaten and briefly detained by officers of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force for commemorating Ogoni Day on 4 January. Two journalists were reportedly beaten by soldiers at the State Military Administrator's offices in Owerri, Imo State. One, Chief Oni Egbunine, publisher of the newspaper The Horn, was reportedly arrested and beaten unconscious in July after his newspaper published allegations of corruption among state officials. The other, Oby Eke-Aghbai, a leading member of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, was reportedly whipped with a belt in September. Also in September Chris Ikwunze, Rivers State correspondent of the Vanguard newspaper, was reportedly horsewhipped by soldiers for smuggling out a note while he was detained without charge for several days for reporting a press statement by mosop. Conditions for most prisoners were so injurious to health as to amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Medical care was virtually non-existent and political prisoners were frequently refused access to treatment. In December former Deputy Head of State retired Major-General Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, a critic of the government's transition program, died in unexplained circumstances after becoming ill in Abakaliki prison. Neither his death nor that of Staff Sergeant Patrick Usikekpo, another prisoner of conscience imprisoned after the grossly unfair treason trials in 1995, were the subject of independent investigations. Patrick Usikekpo was reported to have died in a typhoid fever epidemic in December which killed six prisoners at Uyo prison. Attacks and death threats against Nigerians associated with the pro-democracy and human rights movements continued, some allegedly carried out by government agents. In January Abraham Adesanya, then Vice-President of nadeco, escaped injury when unidentified gunmen fired at his car from another vehicle. Human rights lawyers Chief Gani Fawehinmi and Femi Falana, and journalists at the magazine Tell reported death threats during the year. At least 33 people were executed during the year, including a 17-year-old minor who had sought an urgent injunction from the Federal High Court to prevent his execution. Chidiebere Onuoha was shot dead in front of a crowd of thousands in July after being convicted by a Robbery and Firearms Tribunal, a special court directly appointed by the military authorities which allows no right of appeal. In July, six men were publicly executed by firing-squad in Abia State, the first executions in the state since its creation in 1991. Their identities were not published but they had reportedly been under sentence of death for armed robbery since 1979. At least 43 prisoners were sentenced to death; as many as 800 prisoners were under sentence of death at the end of the year. In November the High Court in Zaria sentenced 24 prisoners to death for a mob killing during an industrial dispute in 1995. Throughout the year, Amnesty International appealed for the release of prisoners of conscience, for the prompt and fair trial of all political prisoners, for an end to torture and the death penalty, and for investigations into deaths in custody and attacks and threats against human rights defenders and opponents of the government Amnesty International urged the UN Commission on Human Rights, which met in March, to appoint a Special Rapporteur on Nigeria after its Special Rapporteurs on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and on the independence of judges and lawyers continued to be denied access to key political prisoners. In April and July Amnesty International provided written and verbal submissions on Nigeria to the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, urging the Commonwealth to set specific goals on human rights for the Nigerian authorities to achieve In September Amnesty International published Nigeria: No significant change – human rights violations continue, and called on the government to commit itself to establishing respect for human rights in Nigeria and to cooperating with the international community in this endeavour – in particular by implementing the recommendations of the UN Secretary-General, the UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group. Amnesty International protested at restrictions on its activities in Nigeria. These included the seizure of the passports of two officers of Amnesty International's Nigerian Section, which were returned in October.