nigerian police

Nigeria police 'killed civilians'

Hundreds of shops were burnt down during the violence

Nigerian security forces killed dozens of people after they were called in to deal with sectarian riots sparked by an election last year, a lobby group says.

Human Rights Watch wants the officers involved in the violence, in the central city of Jos, to be prosecuted.

The group said officers opened fire at random and killed about 130 people, mostly young Muslim men.

Police chiefs deny the claims and some witnesses have suggested the gunmen were impersonating security officers.

Decades of resentment

The violence was ignited by rumours that a Muslim-backed party's candidate for council leader had lost a local election.

Christians burned mosques and Muslims burned churches before security forces were sent in and imposed a curfew.

Ethnic fires still smoulder in Nigeria

"In responding to the inter-communal violence, the Nigerian police and military were implicated in more than 130 arbitrary killings, mostly of young Muslim men," said Eric Guttschuss of Human Rights Watch.

"[We] call on government authorities to promptly arrest and prosecute those responsible."

In their report, the rights group says about 700 people died in the violence - many more than has been officially acknowledged.

Mohammed Lerama, spokesman for the Plateau State police, denied the accusations.

"The police who were sent to restore peace cannot turn around again to kill the harmless civilians they were supposed to protect," he said.

Thousands have died in religious and ethnic violence in northern and central Nigeria in recent years.

However poverty and access to resources such as land often lies at the root of the violence.

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nigeria oil

Chief Sunday Inengite remembers the day the foreigners who had come to his village in Nigeria's Niger Delta struck oil.

"They made us be happy and clap like fools, dance as if we were trained monkeys," he says.

Years later, the 74-year-old now looks back on his youthful enthusiasm with sour regret.

Nigeria has become Africa's biggest oil producer, but the people of Oloibiri complain they have not seen much of the money made in the 52 years of oil production.

"It smacks of wickedness, hard-heartedness," he says.

Inquisitive

Mr Inengite was 19 years old when the foreign engineers came looking for oil in 1953.

An inquisitive young man, he made friends with the British, German and Dutch engineers during the years they were exploring the area around Oloibiri, now in Bayelsa State.

"I was trying to know why they were all here, going into the forests and into the swamps."

Colonial administrators and oil workers used houseboats to explore the Delta

The village elders thought they were looking for palm oil - a valuable edible oil that had been exported from West Africa since the first European traders arrived hundreds of years before.

"It wasn't until we saw what they called the oil - the black stuff - that we knew they were after something different," Mr Inengite said.

The explorers threw a party at their house-boat and invited everyone from the village to see samples of the oil they had been looking for.

"You can imagine the jubilation, after all they had been looking for oil in commercial quantities for years."

But now he says the environment has been damaged, affecting fish catches, and the small plots of land where people had grown crops are polluted by oil spills and gas flares.

"You see fish floating on the surface of the water, something we didn't know before."

"It may be difficult to make a catch that will be enough for your family for one day."

Government corruption

But the problem is not caused just by the oil companies.

The government gets tax and royalties on the oil the companies produce.

Nigeria's Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa is shown round an oil ship c 1960

The government is also a majority shareholder in Nigeria's oil industry and has made over $1.6trillion in revenue over the last 50 years, according to analysts at Standard Bank.

"I don't only blame the whites that came here, what about the government?" Mr Ingenite says.

"People in the government get nearly all the money from the economy."

When the BBC visited the first oil well a few kilometres down the road, we were approached by men working as commercial motorcycle taxis.

They all insisted oil companies, especially Royal Dutch Shell, should give them money as compensation for taking the oil.

But as we spoke, a local government official drove up in his brand new luxury four-wheel-drive car, an expensive gold watch dangling on his wrist.

Why don't people ask their leaders where their money is?

"They have hearts as black as coal, they are evil people - what would be the point?" said Julius Esam, 27.

'Oil museum'

A nearby mosquito infested swamp was being cleared to build a 300-bed hotel and conference centre with an oil "museum".

The contractor told the BBC the project was costing the state government 90billion naira ($592million, £298million.)

NIGERIA'S OIL Oil struck in June 1956 Government has made $1.6trillion since discovery Rivers state budget in 2006 was $1bn (£776milion at 2009 rates) Most Nigerians live on less than $2 a day

Dimeari Von Kemedi, in charge of scrutinising contracts made by the Bayelsa state government said he would stop the project.

"But it's very difficult to prevent every badly conceived or corrupt contract going through," he said.

The access to corrupt money allowed by political office in the Niger Delta is also responsible for the emergence of violent groups in the area.

Groups of "boys" were armed by government during the 2003 elections.

Their job was to ensure the ruling People's Democratic Party held onto power and therefore the oil money.

These groups later got involved in oil theft, stealing tens of thousands of barrels a day for powerful syndicates, kidnapping and extortion.

Although groups like the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) use their contacts with journalists to promote a political agenda, most armed groups are criminal gangs who want their own share of the money being divided among the powerful.

Mr Ingenite says in his old age, he now understands what the militancy wants.

"We frowned at violence because we are very hospitable to those that come," he said.

"But it can't be so today, and if they act the way they do, you can't blame them, because their blood is hot, not like old men's that is cool."

Nigerian untouchables

The story of Nigeria's 'untouchables'

By Andrew Walker BBC News, Enugu, Nigeria

Cosmos Aneke Chiedozie wants to break the stigma of being 'Osu'

Pastor Cosmos Aneke Chiedozie is about to make an admission that virtually no Nigerian like him would be prepared to make.

"My grandfather was an Osu," he says.

He is standing outside his church in Enugu, south-eastern Nigeria, clutching his Bible which he believes has saved him from being a marked man.

Among the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria the Osu are outcasts, the equivalent of being an "untouchable".

Years ago he and his family would be shunned by society, banished from communal land, banned from village life and refused the right to marry anyone not from an Osu family.

Marriage

The vehemence of the tradition has weakened over the last 50 years.

I remember when I was a child, seeing the Osu and running away Prof Ben Obumselu

Nowadays the only trouble the Osu encounter is when they try to get married.

But the fear of social stigma is still strong - to the point that most would never admit to being an Osu.

They fear the consequences for their families in generations to come or at the hands of people who still believe in the old ways.

It took the BBC a long time track down an Osu willing to talk, Igbo journalists, human rights advocates, academics and politicians could suggest no-one.

It was only by chance that Cosmos admitted his family were Osu after an interview with the Pentecostal church - known to oppose the tradition.

Now a born-again Christian, he has had a hard fight to escape the stigma of the Osu.

Sacrifice

People say the Osu are the descendants of people sacrificed to the gods, hundreds of years ago.

The village said the reason I was ill was I was being possessed by the spirit of my grandfather, and he was angry that we had rejected the old ways Cosmos Aneke Chiedozie

But an academic who has researched Igbo traditions says he believes the Osu were actually a kind of "living sacrifice" to the gods from the community.

"I remember when I was a child, seeing the Osu and running away," says Professor Ben Obumselu, former vice-president of the influential Igbo organisation Ohaneze Ndi Igbo.

"They were banned from all forms of civil society; they had no land, lived in the shrine of the gods, and if they could, would farm the land next to the road."

"It was believed that they had been dedicated to the gods, that they belonged to them, rather then the world of the human," he said.

Nigeria's growing cities began to break down such traditions of village life, he says.

"If someone lives in Lagos these days, the only time a person may come into contact with it is when they are planning to get married. They go home to tell their families, their parents turn around and say, 'No you can't marry because they're Osu.'"

Initiated

Cosmos' father had denounced the traditional beliefs that made him an outcast from society.

The Osu are considered to be 'living sacrifices" to spirits

He raised Cosmos to be a Christian too, hoping the bloodline of the Osu would be broken.

But when Cosmos was a child his grandfather died and at around the same time Cosmos fell sick.

"The village said the reason I was ill was I was being possessed by the spirit of my grandfather, and he was angry that we had rejected the old ways," he said.

The village elders put pressure on his father to initiate Cosmos into the old traditions and culture.

It was either that, or he would die, they said.

So he left church, learnt about the spirits and his status in the village.

Outlaw

But this ostracism, he now believes, left him without "moral direction".

He became an itinerant smuggler and outlaw, bringing in goods illegally over Nigeria's northern border from Niger.

The continued belief in ritual avoidance has caused great harm to society Prof Ben Obumselu

Eventually he was arrested and thrown in jail.

"It was in the prison yard that I was born again," he said.

"When I believed in the old ways, I could not marry or be part of my community," he said.

"Now I've been born again, I have rejected all that, and my wife, she is born again too, and doesn't care about it either."

His wife's family had also rejected the traditions of the Osu and did not object to their daughter's choice of husband.

Education advantage

Other Osu have been able to use the ostracism to their advantage, says Mr Obumselu.

Unable to make a way in village life, some Osu embraced "Western" education and became Nigeria's first doctors and lawyers, he says.

Consequently many of modern Igboland's prominent families are Osu.

So why does the stigma remain?

Mr Obumselu says the traditions have a lingering hold on people because they are not sure how much power the "old ways" still have.

Traditionally the Osu are treated as a people apart, but were never the victims of violence.

But today some community conflicts have erupted between people each accusing the other of being Osu, Mr Obumselu says.

"The continued belief in ritual avoidance has caused great harm to society, especially in Enugu."

Pentecostal churches, like Mr Chiedozie's, are having an effect and a growing population may also drown out the stigma of being Osu, says Mr Obumselu.

"After all, if in 1800 there might only be a handful of Osu in any place, in 2000 it may be a third of the village!"

Militants in Nigeria

Militants 'blow up Nigeria pipe'

Militants say they are fighting for the rights of local people

Militants in Nigeria's oil-producing region say they have blown up a major pipeline belonging to Italian energy firm Agip.

Agip has not yet commented on the claims. A military spokesman denied that a pipeline had been hit but said there had been a "skirmish".
He also denied the militants' claims to have disarmed seven soldiers.
Violence in the Niger Delta region has severely cut production in Nigeria - one of the world's main oil exporters.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) has rejected the government's offer of an amnesty, although another militant leader, Ateke Tom, has agreed to lay down his weapons.
Mend has warned all foreign oil workers to leave the area.
It says its latest attack took place in Nembe creek in Bayelsa State on a pipeline supplying crude oil to Agip's Brass exports terminal.
"Our fighters encountered a military gunboat and all the soldiers numbering seven were dispossessed of their weapons. The gunboat was also stripped of its weapons before it was disabled by explosives," Mend said in an e-mail sent to news organisations.
If confirmed, this would be the second attack in Bayelsa State this week, after a pipeline belonging to Shell was blown up on Wednesday.
Correspondents say the militants seem to be expanding their field of operations, as most recent attacks have been in neighbouring Delta State.
The military is currently pursuing a major offensive against the militants which has caused thousands to flee their homes.
Mend say they are fighting for the rights of local people to benefit more from their region's oil wealth.
But correspondents say many criminal gangs have taken advantage of the unrest to steal oil and extort money from oil companies.