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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly 252 covering 22-26 November 2004 - OCHA IRIN

Sunday 16 January 2005


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IRIN-WA Weekly 252 covering 22-26 November 2004

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

MAURITANIA: Trial starts of 181 accused of plotting against president
NIGER: Tandja faces run-off after leading first round poll
COTE D IVOIRE: Mbeki takes centre-stage in difficult quest for peace
NIGERIA: Obasanjo says farming, not corruption, makes him rich
GHANA: Kufuor likely to win second term as president, rival overshadowed
LIBERIA: Disarmament finally ends nearly a month behind schedule
COTE D IVOIRE: Economic aftershocks of crisis may be felt in region for years

MAURITANIA: 181 people on trial accused of plots against president

The mass trial of 181 people accused of plotting a series of attempts to overthrow Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya has opened at a remote military barracks in the desert.

An IRIN correspondent present at the improvised courthouse in Ouad Naga, 50 km east of the capital Nouakchott, said security was high as the trial began on Sunday.

Hundreds of soldiers and military policemen stood guard as defence lawyers and journalists packed into the court room, set up in a base of the paramilitary gendarmerie, where the accused are being held.

Government prosecutors allege that the 170 military men and 11 civilians -- including former president Mohamed Kouna Ould Haidallah and two other opposition leaders -- were involved in three separate attempts to stage a coup aimed at ending Ould Taya's 20-year reign.

The president is a former army colonel who seized power himself in a coup in 1984. Since then, he has ruled this desert nation, which straddles black and Arab Africa, with an iron hand.

Most of those facing trial are accused of backing an army uprising in June 2003. Two days of heavy fighting took place in Nouakchott before forces loyal to Ould Taya finally regained control of the capital.

Several others are accused of joining the same group of conspirators in two subsequent coup plots which the government said it dismantled in August and September this year.

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NIGER: Tandja faces run-off after leading first round poll

President Mamadou Tandja, who is seeking a second five-year term, has won the first round of presidential elections. However, he faces a run-off against his main challenger on 4 December after failing to secure an absolute majority.

According to provisional results published by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), Tandja won 40.67 percent of the votes cast in the first round on 16 November, eight points more than in the first round of the 1999 presidential election which brought him to power.

Tandja, a 66-year-old retired amy colonel, is the first elected leader of this arid landlocked country to have completed a full term of office without being deposed by a coup.

Underlining the consolidation of democracy in Niger, which held its first multiparty polls in 1993, international observers present said the first round of the presidential election was “democratic, free and transparent.”

“Generally, the poll was calm,” the 92 observers from the African Union and European Union said in a joint statement. “Voters showed discipline and good citizenship.”

Tandja's challenger in the second round run-off will be opposition leader and former prime minister Mahamadou Issoufou. He won 24.60 percent of the vote in the first round of the election, three points more than in 1999, when he lost to Tandja in the second round.

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COTE D IVOIRE: Mbeki takes centre-stage in difficult quest for peace

First France tried to negotiate a settlement to the civil war that has partitioned Cote d'Ivoire for the past two years. Then the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations tried to mediate a solution to the conflict. But to no avail.

Now it is the turn of South African President Thabo Mbeki, a leader of impeccable democratic credentials who controls the most powerful country on the African continent and helped broker peace deals in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.

He comes to the Cote d'Ivoire issue with clean hands as a complete outsider to the conflict.

Mbeki was called in as a peacemaker by the African Union after Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo launched an abortive offensive to recapture the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire on 4 November, breaking an 18-month ceasefire.

The offensive was stopped in its tracks after just two days when French peacekeeping troops destroyed Gbagbo's jet bombers and helicopter gunships on the ground in retaliation for the deaths of nine French soldiers in an air raid.

Following a lightning visit to the Ivorian capital to meet Gbagbo a week later, and subsequent consultations with rebel and opposition leaders in Johannesburg, Mbeki has announced that he is planning a return trip to Cote d'Ivoire within the next few days.

This time he will meet rebel leader Guillaume Soro in his stronghold of Bouake as well as Gbagbo, Prime Minister Seydou Diarra and parliamentary opposition leaders in Abidjan.

In the meantime, Gbagbo and his supporters are arguing publicly that France, which now has almost 5,000 troops in Cote d'Ivoire, is no longer a neutral player in the conflict and should submit its forces in the country to UN control or withdraw them completely.

And they are relying on Mbeki to press this view on the international community.

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NIGERIA: Obasanjo says farming, not corruption, makes him rich

President Olusegun Obasanjo earns more than a quarter of a million dollars every month from his large farm, a senior aide said on Thursday.

The aide volunteered the information as Obasanjo, the leader of one of the world's most corrupt countries, sought to dismiss fears that he was enriching himself in office.

Obasanjo, a former army general, owns hundreds of hectares of land at Otta in Ogun State in south-western Nigeria, about 40 km from the country's commercial capital Lagos.

Besides rearing chickens, pigs and ostriches, Obasanjo frequently uses the farm for diplomatic meetings. Earlier this month, he held a crisis summit there with five other African heads of state to discuss the latest upsurge in violence in Cote d'Ivoire.

Femi Fani-Kayode, a special assistant to the president, told IRIN that “some unknown people” were circulating allegations that Obasanjo was diverting state funds to his farm.

“The President makes 30 million naira (US $227,000) every month on the average from his farm,” the aide said by telephone.
“When people say he is using state funds on the farm, it may help to show the kind of money he already makes from it."

Corruption has long been a bugbear in Africa's most populous nation. It is Africa's top oil producer, and ranks seventh in world terms, but more than 80 percent of Nigeria's 126 million people live on less than a dollar a day.

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GHANA: Kufuor likely to win a second term as president, rival overshadowed

With less than two weeks to go before Ghanaians head to the ballot box, President John Kufuor is on course to win a second term as the opposition candidate struggles to emerge as his own man, analysts said on Friday.

Kufuor, of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), will face his main rival John Atta Mills of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and other minor candidates on 7 December. If no-one wins more than 50 percent of the vote, there will be a run-off but most commentators think that unlikely.

"He really has to do something very foolish or outrageous to lose. The election is his for the taking and my surveys indicate there will be only one round of polling," said Ben Ephson, the editor of the privately-owned Dispatch newspaper, who has accurately predicted the last two elections.

Kwesi Jonah, a senior researcher at the Accra-based Institute of Economic Affairs, agreed.

"If everything goes well, the incumbent will be able to obtain 55 percent of the vote," he told IRIN by phone.

Weighing against the opposition candidate are two crucial factors, analysts say.

Firstly Kufuor soundly beat Atta Mills in the last presidential election in 2000, and perhaps more importantly, Atta Mills has failed to emerge from the shadow of former NDC leader Jerry Rawlings, who dominated political life in Ghana for a generation.

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LIBERIA: Disarmament finally ends nearly a month behind schedule

The United Nations has finally wound up its disarmament programme in Liberia, almost a month after the original deadline for former combatants to hand in their weapons, UN and government officials said on Wednesday.

General Daniel Opande, the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia, said about 5,000 fighters had been disarmed in Lofa county in the far northwest of the country, by the time the exercise ended there on Monday.

Jean Marie Guehenno, the head of UN peacekeeping operations in New York, said during a visit to Liberia earlier this week that over 100,000 former combatants in Liberia's 14-year civil war had reported for disarmament - more than twice as many as the UN originally anticipated.

Although the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, kicked off its repatriation programme for some 300,000 refugees at the beginning of October, officials have repeatedly said they will not send people back to areas that are unsafe and awash with weapons.

To date, only seven out of 15 counties in Liberia have been declared safe for the return of the refugees who fled abroad and about 300,000 more people who were internally displaced within the country.

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COTE D IVOIRE: Economic aftershocks of crisis may be felt around region for years to come

The turmoil in Cote d'Ivoire has brought cross-border trade screeching to a halt and with thousands of people already flocking to the borders to escape, top UN officials fear the conflict could rock the economy of the impoverished West African region for many years to come.

"In the medium and long term there are still serious concerns. We are not on the eve of a lasting settlement of the crisis," Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the United Nations Special Representative for West Africa, told IRIN in a recent interview.

"This is not good for understanding between countries and it is certainly not good for confidence in the economy of the region."

Cote d'Ivoire, with its vast cocoa and coffee plantations, was once the economic success story of the region, attracting immigrants from neighbouring countries and European expatriates alike. The gleaming skyscrapers in downtown Abidjan paid testament to what many called the "Paris of Africa".

Before the outbreak of civil war, Cote d'Ivoire accounted for 40 percent of the economic output of the Economic and Monetary Union of West Africa (UMEOA), a group of eight mainly French-speaking countries that share the CFA franc as their common currency

But a coup attempt launched by northern rebels against President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002, unleashed a deadly cycle of violence. Earlier this month government troops shattered a precarious 18-month ceasefire, bombing rebel strongholds and raising the spectre of a return to full-scale fighting.

"How can we hope to attract foreign investment, essential for creating the jobs that so many millions of West African youths desperately need, if some of our leaders continue to pursue the logic of war and vendetta year after year?" Ould-Abdallah said.

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[ENDS]

Other recent WEST AFRICA reports:

Bettter coordination and reserve funds needed to fight locusts, 14/Jan/05

Central bank gives poor more time to swap old bank-notes, 13/Jan/05

Africa’s poorest nations extend helping hand to tsunami victims, 12/Jan/05

IRIN-WA Weekly 258 covering 1-7 January 2005, 7/Jan/05

Winners and losers in bank-note swap, 4/Jan/05

Other recent Democracy & Governance reports:

COTE D IVOIRE: UN mulls next move as officials warn on tight timeframe for elections, 14/Jan/05

ANGOLA: Cautious optimism for 2005, 14/Jan/05

ETHIOPIA: Elections to be delayed in Somali Region, 14/Jan/05

UGANDA: President shuffles cabinet ahead of debate on presidential term limits, 14/Jan/05

SOMALIA: Parliament endorses new cabinet, 13/Jan/05

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