Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
01ABUJA1192
2001-05-22 13:44:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Abuja
Cable title:  

POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN KANO RISING

Tags:  PINS PGOV PHUM NI 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 001192 

SIPDIS


OFFICIAL INFORMAL


FOR KFITZGIBBON


E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/22/2006
TAGS: PINS PGOV PHUM NI
SUBJECT: POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN KANO RISING


REF: A) ABUJA B) ABUJA 0762 C) ABUJA 1644 D) ABUJA 1635


Classified by DCM Tim Andrews for reasons 1.5 (b) and (d).


C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 001192

SIPDIS


OFFICIAL INFORMAL


FOR KFITZGIBBON


E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/22/2006
TAGS: PINS PGOV PHUM NI
SUBJECT: POTENTIAL FOR VIOLENCE IN KANO RISING


REF: A) ABUJA B) ABUJA 0762 C) ABUJA 1644 D) ABUJA 1635


Classified by DCM Tim Andrews for reasons 1.5 (b) and (d).



1. (U) Summary: In a series of meetings held in Kano May
10-12, Government officials, religious leaders, academics and
journalists repeatedly stressed to Poloff the "dangerous"
level of tension between Kano's Hausa-Fulani and large
immigrant Igbo and Yoruba population. Communal relations
there appear to have deteriorated since the Ambassador's
visit in March, largely because of the continued perception
among Kano's Hausa majority that Lagos State Government is
unwilling to prosecute OPC members responsible for the
killing of Hausas in the Ajegunle incident last October (Ref.
C). The activities of Shari'a vigilante groups have also
increased apprehension among
Southerners. Leaders on all sides are concerned, and are
warning of the potential for a bloody inter-ethnic conflict
in the city if something is not done to lesson the tension.
The Obasanjo Administration's reluctance to go beyond
immediate intervention in times of crisis has not helped to
alleviate those concerns. If the Lagos and Kano Governors do
not begin to coordinate their efforts, and take at least some
steps towards reconciliation, another round of violence may
be difficult to avoid. End Summary.


--------------
Storm Clouds
--------------



2. (C) The Chairman of the Kano chapter of the Christian
Association of Nigeria, Reverend G.A. Ojo, is pastor of the
First Baptist Church, the largest Yoruba church in Kano. Ojo
said that his church was being reduced to an all-male
membership, as the Yoruba in Kano were sending their families
back South. He said that tensions between Kano's Hausa
majority and its Southern population had risen
"significantly." Ojo praised the efforts of Governor
Kwankwaso, the Emir of Kano, the police and Muslim religious
leaders for preventing reprisals by Kano's Hausa against
their Yoruba neighbors following the Ajegunle incident last
October, in which hundreds of Hausas--largely from Kano--were
killed in a Lagos suburb.



3. (C) Ojo said that Kano's long-resident Southern minority,

which numbers in the range of half a million people, was very
aware of the historical ebb and flow of inter-ethnic violence
in Kano. That collective memory extends to the pogrom
against Igbos in Kano in 1966--itself a reaction to the coup
attempt in which mostly Igbo officers killed Northern Premier
Sir Ahmadu Bello, Premier Tafawa Balewa and other Nigerian
leaders. By some estimates, up to 30,000 thousands Igbo and
Yoruba were thought to have been killed in that incident,
which was a major precipitating factor in the Biafran
secession. Ojo commented that "everyone" was aware that
tensions were particularly high at the moment, and that any
of several incidents--in Kano or Lagos--could spark a major
episode of inter-ethnic violence. Ojo added that the Igbos
in Sabon Gari were all armed, and implied that the Yorubas
were as well. He said that a direct attack against Sabon
Gari--a densely-populated rectangular enclave approximately
2.5 by one kilometers--would be unlikely because it is
essentially an "armed camp." Ojo predicted that the violence
would probably be focused on the substantial number of Igbo
and Yoruba living elsewhere in the city.



4. (C) Ojo asserted that while the Shari'a issue in Kano did
not help matters, Christian leaders had confidence in the
Government's intentions not to allow Shari'a to affect their
population. Their primary concern, he said, was with crime
and mob violence. He added that an action by Shari'a
enforcers, for example, could provide an opportunity for
Kano's "Yandabas" (gangs of criminally inclined, unemployed
youth) to set off unrest in order to begin looting. Ojo said
that Kano's Hausas were "furious" over the failure of Lagos
State to prosecute Frederic Fashehun (leader of the OPC) and
other OPC members for their perceived involvement in the
Ajegunle incident. He complained bitterly about the actions
of the OPC in Lagos and Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu:
"Either they do not know that what they do puts us at risk,
or they do not care. But we have no control over them. We
can only sit and wait."


--------------
The National Police
--------------



5. (C) Deputy Commissioner of Police, Emmanuel Ezozue, an
Igbo, confirmed that Kano's security situation had become
"dangerous." He said that preventing reprisal violence after
Ajegunle was a significant accomplishment, but added that
anger in the Hausa community over that incident had not
dissipated in the intervening seven months. If anything, he
said, it was increasing because of a perceived lack of
justice in Lagos and the severely depressed economy in Kano.
Ezozue said, "My own brother left Kano for Abuja. It's just
too dangerous." Asked whether Kano's police would be able to
stop the unrest feared by many, the Deputy Commissioner said
flatly, "No. There are too many of them, and not enough
police."


--------------
The Governor
--------------



6. (C) Governor Kwankwaso discussed at length the recent
Hisbah enforcement action against hotels that continue to
serve alchohol in the State (Ref. A). He said that while he
had arrested those involved in the burning of the Igbo-owned
Henzina Hotel, he could not try them at this point because of
the potential reaction by Shari'a supporters. Kwankwaso said
that Kano's Hausa majority, independent of the Shari'a
question, continued to be outraged by the failure to
prosecute any of the organizers or perpetrators of the
violence in Ajegunle. He was especially critical of Lagos
Governor Bola Tinubu: "The man should have kept Fashehun
under house arrest in his hotel, a house, anywhere, for six
months so people up here would calm down. Letting him go
after one week did not help me manage the situation here."



7. (C) Kwankwaso said that he had requested but not received
any help from the Obasanjo Administration on how to handle
the increasingly precarious security situation in Kano. In
the immediate aftermath of the Ajegunle violence, delegations
sent by the Federal Government fanned out across the
nation--including Kano--to preach peace and restraint.
Clearly frustrated with the lack of current support from
Abuja in addressing the causes of the violence, Kwankwaso
declaimed: "Kano is the most difficult city in Nigeria to
manage! It is the second largest in the country, and most of
its people are poor, even by our standards. Lagos has
bankers, lawyers, a middle class, in addition to its poor. I
have a few rich Alhajis--the rest are nail clippers and
people selling sugar-cane on the streets." Acknowledging the
economic roots of recurring unrest in Kano, Kwankwaso added,
"A hungry man is an angry man. And many people in Kano are
hungry." (Note: Violent crime in Lagos is much worse, viewed
in per capita terms, than Kano, so the Governor's assertion
is not entirely accurate. End Note.)



8. (C) Kwankwaso re-iterated that many of Kano's poor Hausas
were focusing much of their anger on the perceived injustice
against their kinsmen in the Ajegunle incident and its
aftermath. He said that immediate revenge would have
dissipated the collective anger generated by that incident.
Kwankwaso added that he had been only half successful in
preventing a recurrence of violence: while reprisals for
Ajegunle were averted, the anger it generated remains.
According to Kwankwaso, the desire for vengeance appeared to
be growing.



9. (C) Consul General Lagos has reported to us that the
commission convened to study the causes of the Ajegunle riots
is nearing the completion of its report. It appears that the
Commission may adopt the conspiracy theory that the violence
was instigated by a prominent Northerner to de-stabilize the
country, and therefor conclude that the Hausas in the
Ajegunle market riot started the violence and essentially
provoked the conflict that led to their own deaths. While it
is difficult to determine with absolute certainty all that
happened in Ajegunle, as far as Northerners are concerned,
the bare facts of the incident speak for themselves: a large
number of the non-indigene Hausa minority were killed by a
majority population of Southerners, which suggests the
simpler explanation of bitter, long-standing grievances
boiling over, as they often do in Nigeria, with the minority
ethnic group taking the lion's share of the casualties. Not
surprisingly, Hausas and Yorubas have divergent perspectives
on those events, and on the Odu'a Peoples' Congress (OPC),
that are not easily reconciled. The OPC appears to be viewed
by Lagos State government as a legitimate civilian cultural
and law enforcement organization, whose responses can be
sometimes excessive. It is generally viewed in the North as
a criminal, para-military organization that enjoys the tacit
support of Governor Tinubu and his Attorney General, and took
the lead in the unrest that resulted in the deaths of
hundreds of Hausas.



10. (C) Acting in the ad-hoc manner of previous heads of
state, President Obasanjo is reluctant to address this
situation beyond traditional responses to immediate
violence--police and army repression. He risks alienating
what Yoruba base he has if he aggressively pursues the OPC.
He is already viewed by much of the Northern leadership as
having "gone ethnic." In the eyes of Northerners, neither
Minister of Justice Bola Ige nor Governor Tinubu appear
interested in prosecuting criminal acts by OPC members
either. Although there are many Northerners serving in the
Obasanjo Administration, including senior conservatives who
remain loyal to his government, many other Hausas believe
that President Obasanjo is representing Yoruba--rather than
national--interests. Barring intervention by the Executive,
the problem is left to the Governors, the police, and--if
there is a truly serious outbreak of inter-communal
violence--the military to solve.





11. Comment: Truth can remain highly elusive in any
discussion across ethnic lines about seminal historical
events in Nigeria. Each of the three major ethnic groups
tailors--or invents--facts to support its own long-standing
story of victimization by the others, which usually and
conveniently elides over that group's role as victimizer.
These stories color even the most basic perceptions, and
provide the rationale for occasionally devastating violence
against members of the perceived "aggressor" ethnic group,
thereby creating new victims ad nauseam. Rightly or wrongly,
Kano's Hausas believe that their people were victimized by
the OPC in Lagos, and that both the Lagos State and Federal
Governments have failed to arrest and to prosecute the
perpetrators. By all accounts, due to poverty, prejudice,
familial ties and anger at perceived injustice, many Hausas
in Kano appear poised to seek vengeance against their Yoruba
neighbors with fairly slight provocation. Once violence of
that nature commences, regardless of the justification, the
Igbos are usually also attacked. This is partly because they
are Southerners, but primarily because their homes and
businesses are targets of opportunity for looting by
participants in the violence.



12. Comment Continued.: There has been limited contact
between Governors Tinubu and Kwankwaso, while the Mission
maintains close ties with both. Encouraging co-operation on
calming ethnic tensions is one option for the USG to pursue.
At the least, Governor Tinubu should be made aware that
releasing an inflammatory report on the Ajegunle incident in
Lagos will not enhance the security of his ethnic kinsmen in
Kano, to say the least. A visit to Kano by the Governor or
other Lagos officials to express regret for the loss of life
at Ajegunle--similar to Gov. Makarfis' "tour" of the
East--might be helpful in defusing some of the tension.
USAID is currently planning conflict-resolution programs
which may be of use, if their resources could be partly spent
on a public education campaign via radio for the largely,
illiterate Northern population. We will continue to sound
opinion amongst Nigerian security personnel, including NSA
Aliyu Mohammed, to guage their own level of concern, and to
express our misgivings about the security situation in Kano.
End Comment.
Andrews