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Human Rights Watch reports indicts Andy Uba in election violence-New York Times

October 9, 2007
October 10, 2007

By LYDIA POLGREEN

DAKAR, Senegal, Oct. 9 — A billboard erected by Nigeria’s governing party to celebrate its victory in April’s election looms over Aba Road in the oil city of Port Harcourt. “Power comes from God,” it reads. “Thank you for voting.”

The sentiment is a far cry from the findings of a new report on Nigeria released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch. It says that the real sources of power in Nigeria are the wealthy political godfathers who financed an epidemic of election-related violence that killed at least 300 people in the flawed election. And ballots, the report says, are no match for the bullets of the gangs hired by politicians to rig the vote.

“The conduct of many public officials and government institutions is so pervasively marked by violence and corruption as to more resemble criminal activity than democratic governance,” the report says.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, became a democracy in 1999, after long, brutal military rule. But the transition has been long and rocky, with two deeply marred elections and little meaningful development from the billions of dollars flowing from the country’s vast oil reserves.

The April election was so seriously affected by rigging, violence and incompetence that international observers said its results — a resounding victory for the governing People’s Democratic Party — were not credible.

The report lays out in stark detail the contracts made between politicians seeking office and the rich kingmakers who back them in exchange for kickbacks from government coffers. It also describes the brutal means used by criminal gangs to sway elections, including intimidation and assassination, in the 2003 and 2007 elections, both of which were marked by violence, fraud and administrative incompetence.

One state covered in the report, Anambra in the southeast, offers a particularly explicit example of the intersection of godfather politics and gang violence. In Anambra, Chris Uba, a powerful chieftain in the People’s Democratic Party, once boasted of personally placing virtually every elected official in office.

The report includes a copy of a contract signed by Mr. Uba and his protégé Chris Ngige, who won the governor’s race in 2003 with Mr. Uba’s financial backing.

Mr. Ngige promised in the contract to “exercise and manifest absolute loyalty to the person of Chief Chris Uba as my mentor, benefactor and sponsor” and gave Mr. Uba control over many appointments and the awarding of all government contracts.

The document refers to Mr. Ngige as the “Administrator” and to Mr. Uba as “Leader/Financier.” It empowered Mr. Uba to “avenge himself in the way and manner adjudged by him as fitting and adequate” if Mr. Ngige failed to live up to the bargain.

Mr. Uba fell out with Mr. Ngige soon after the election and tried several times to remove him. Mr. Ngige signed a letter of resignation with a gun to his head in July 2003, the report says. Neither Mr. Uba nor Mr. Ngige could immediately be reached for comment.

A court later threw out Mr. Ngige’s resignation, but in 2006 the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that he had been elected fraudulently, and his opponent from 2003, Peter Obi, was installed as governor.

This year’s election was little different. The report contends that Mr. Uba arranged for his brother, Andy, a close adviser to Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, to win the party’s primary as nominee for governor, using a feared street gang known as the Buccaneers to clear voters from polling stations while gang members marked the ballots.

“In the primaries we carried axes and machetes and chased away any voters that came near while we were voting,” one member of the Buccaneers told Human Rights Watch, according to the report.

Andy Uba, who was questioned by United States customs officials on suspicion of smuggling $170,000 into the United States aboard Mr. Obasanjo’s presidential plane in 2003, coasted to victory after the Independent National Electoral Commission disqualified his main opponents. A court later ruled that Mr. Obi had been deprived of his full four-year term and reinstated him.

Nigeria’s new president, Umaru Yar’Adua, has admitted there were lapses in the election and pledged to reform the electoral system to stamp out abuses.

Even though the courts acted in the Anambra election, the report argued, they did not address the core problem of the state’s broken political system.

“The authors of Anambra’s worst abuses — including murder, illegal possession of weapons and the wholesale rigging of the 2007 electoral process in the state — continue to enjoy complete impunity for their crimes,” the report contends.

Similar political arrangements involving godfathers, politicians and gangs were detailed in the report in three other states, including regions in the largely Muslim north, the oil-rich Niger Delta and the restive southwest, home to the Yoruba people.


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