Nigeria has launched an investigation into claims that a large number of military officers have been canvassing support for a coup d’état in the oil-exporting West African giant, officials said on Friday.
”It’s true that the intelligence community — national and military security agencies — are investigating what looks like a serious breach of security on the part of some military officers and apparent civilian collaborators,” said President Olusegun Obasanjo’s spokesperson, Remi Oyo.
Asked to confirm reports from military sources that 28 officers had been detained, interrogated and released within recent days as part of the probe, Oyo said: ”I cannot say the exact figure, but it’s a considerable number.”
”But it remains an investigation on an allegation and the intelligence community is just doing its job, so there is nothing that is extraordinary about what is happening,” she added.
Officials played down fears that Africa’s most populous country was at risk of its sixth military takeover since 1966, insisting the officers concerned posed no threat to Nigeria’s five-year-old experiment with civilian rule.
But any hint that the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter might face another round of instability will raise concerns in the international community, which has come to see the country as a source of much-needed stability in its region.
An army general, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that most of those questioned were disgruntled elements without current commands and, while being potential troublemakers, were no threat to the government.
The general said Wednesday’s transfer of Hamza al-Mustapha, the late military dictator Sani Abacha former security chief, from a civilian Lagos prison to a military intelligence facility had been connected to the probe.
The Nigerian Prisons Service said on Thursday in a statement that al-Mustapha had been released to agents of the Directorate of Military Intelligence for questioning on ”matters of national security”.
Al-Mustapha, who was seen as Abacha’s right-hand man, was on remand in Kirikiri Maximum Security prison on a charge he ordered the attempted murder in 1996 of a newspaper publisher who fell out with the military regime.
The detainee’s family alleged that he was shot in the leg during his transfer, a claim denied by the police.
”This coup allegation is just a ploy to keep him behind bars, and ultimately kill him,” Al-Mustapha’s brother Hadi said at the family home in the northern city of Kano, home town to both Abacha and al-Mustapha.
Despite its chequered past and unruly present, Nigeria is considered by many international observers as key to preserving stability in West Africa. Its troops have won praise for peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Last year foreign visitors, including US President George Bush and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, welcomed the country’s 1999 return to elected rule and subsequent progress towards entrenched democracy.
The army last relinquished power in 1999 with the election of a former military ruler, President Olusegun Obasanjo, as civilian head of state.
He was re-elected in April last year, in a poll that both Nigerian and international monitors said was marred by widespread ballot-rigging.
Nigeria’s 126-million-strong population is criss-crossed by dangerous ethnic and religious faultlines.
About 250 tribal groups and two major religions — Islam and Christianity — jostle for prominence in a country where three-quarters of the population live mired in deep poverty on less than $1 a day, despite its oil wealth.
Civil unrest has killed at least 10 000 people since Obasanjo came to power, while the police boasted on Thursday that they had shot dead more than 7 000 ”suspected armed robbers” since January 2000.
Turf wars between rival ethnic groups claim dozens of lives every month, and the Islamic north’s decision to reintroduce Sharia law has increased the sometimes murderous tensions between Muslim and Christian communities. — Sapa-AFP