MEND LEADER RELEASED

Nigerian rebel leader Henry Okah was released from jail on Monday after the government withdrew its case against him, a federal court judge said.

President Umaru Yar’Adua agreed to drop felony charges against Okah, who is the suspected leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), after the militant accepted the government’s “unconditional” amnesty.

“Having reviewed what the attorney general said, you have become a free man at this moment. You are now discharged,” Judge Mohammed Liman told Okah at a hearing in the central city of Jos.

One of Okah’s lawyers confirmed his client had been freed and would travel to the capital Abuja later on Monday.

“We are relieved this has finally happened after more than a year,” the lawyer said

Okah was arrested in Angola in September 2007 and extradited to Nigeria to face charges carrying a possible death penalty. His deteriorating health has been an increasing concern, with his lawyers saying he needs urgent treatment overseas.

The rebel leader is the first senior militant to participate in the federal amnesty programme, which Yar’Adua created last month in hopes of halting the unrest in the Niger Delta.

Some rebels have said they would lay down their arms after Okah’s release, but analysts believe the violence will not subside.

MEND said earlier on Monday it had attacked a key loading dock for oil tankers in Lagos state, the first such assault in the area since the group began its latest campaign of violence against Africa’s biggest oil producer.

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JUST BEFORE NIGERIA MURMURS

Raucous Shouts of ‘akwaaba’ rent through the air; the US President Barack Obama had finally come through the Kotoka airport met the parliamentarians and reconciled Michele with her ancient roots and all the way the large street-cheering crowds were ecstatic. Ghana’s media was painted red before and on D-day. ‘Welcome home’ they all seemed to chorus. Akin to the triumphant entry, scenes around Accra must have drawn greenish gawks and blushes from Africa’s de facto king of kings; AU’s and Libya’s Muammar Ghaddafi.

On the flip side, Obama’s visit to Ghana has polarised the continent. Like biblical Joseph’s hydra headed envious siblings, sub Saharan Africa is in stupefaction over Obama’s choice of Ghana. The bitter undigested pill is Ghana is neither the same country where Michael Jackson infamously covered his snout behind tinted glasses lest he be plagued by the Spanish flu during a tour in the early 90s nor is it marked with the ragged poverty striped jute bags that flooded Nigeria in droves in the eighties in search of greener pasture.

Everything Ghana is today Nigeria and the remainder of sub Saharan Africa’s jealous siblings are far away from. Listen to Obama.“Ghana represents a functional democratic system with Institutions that work for the people.” 5 successive elections in Ghana have engendered the spawning of the idyllic dividends of democracy. With consternation many local civil rights groups had responded to May 29th; Nigeria’s democracy day. Then Nigeria’s media was awash with congratulatory messages heralding 10 years of uninterrupted democracy .In retrospect it would have been more laudable if those messages had aped similar messages broadcast in the Gold coast a few years back-one year of uninterrupted power supply.

The debilitating power situation in Nigeria has attained mythical levels. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo ludicrously advocated spiritual healing in dealing with the power demons that threatens to shut down Nigeria’s flailing economy. But the demons that hex Nigeria’s weak infrastructure are corruption and mismanagement; demons that have transmuted potholes to pit holes leading to thousands of on highways in major cities. Obama’s sobering speech in Ghana would scorch the threadbare fabric of Nigeria’s soul when he says Ghana has shown it is serious in reducing corruption which is evident in its real economic gains. Corruption is the enervating aeon that nourishes and fêtes the personae of governance in Nigeria. Convicted and accused political leaders wash their hands in spittle dining unashamedly with the central government; enjoying the broad media limelight; perks mean economic and political salvation. This modern day buccaneering which has come at a social cost- soaring apathy and frustration among its populace with a jaundiced central government.

An 80s hit blared through a giant speaker at Oshodi, on my way to work; ‘weytin dey for Shokoto’ a reminder that state governors seeking for knowledge in the prestigious Harvard University could instead go as the crow flies to Ghana and take effective Pol. 101 lectures. And who knows five years from now Nigeria may have yet taken the most important lesson from Obama’s visit when he re-echoed age-long wisdom saying that Africa has no reason not to be self sufficient when it comes to food.

And like the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior we may one day proselyte that  Nigeria shall live up to the true meaning of its creed, as it channels the world’s population to its borders in search of fine grains, paralleling Joseph in his important role as preserver of his family and ultimately the human race.

Aghogho, CONNECTAFRICA

ZIMBABWEAN MP’S RUCKUS DISRUPTS CONFERENCE

Zimbabwean authorities abandoned a national constitution-making conference on Monday after chaos broke out among hundreds of rival delegates, witnesses said.

The conference — to discuss how to write a new constitution under a unity government formed by President Robert Mugabe and old rival Morgan Tsvangirai — degenerated into shouting and heckling during an opening statement by the speaker of parliament.

Delegates from Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party booed and threw bottles of water at each other before riot police moved in to drive them out of the conference venue.

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NIGERIEN LAWYERS DOWN WIGS IN PROTEST

Niger’s lawyers said on Sunday they would strike this week in protest at the president’s plan to hold a referendum on extending his rule, a day after the European Union delayed an aid payment over the vote row.

Despite mounting opposition at home and abroad, President Mamadou Tandja is pushing ahead with an August 4 vote to allow him to hold on to power for another three years in the uranium producing country after his second term expires in December.

“The General Assembly of the Order of Lawyers has decided to lay down its robes and not work on Monday, July 13, 2009 in solidarity with the Constitutional Court,” the lawyers said in a statement referring to Niger’s top court.

The court was dissolved last month after it declared Tandja’s plans illegal. The president has also dissolved parliament, assumed emergency powers and imposed restrictions on the private press in his bid to hold the poll.

The 71-year-old president addressed the nation on Sunday evening, saying only the people of Niger could decide whether he should stay on as president but they should vote “yes” to consolidate progress and build a better future.

He called for people to judge him by the progress he had delivered and said he welcomed debate, but warned the state would take measures to ensure law and order was maintained.

Critics including regional body ECOWAS, the United Nations and donors, have called the referendum a step backwards after some progress towards democracy over the last decade, but the EU is the first body to impose financial sanctions.

“Because of the influence this could have on the management of public finances, it has been decided to postpone the payment of a tranche of budget support,” a European Commission official in Brussels told Reuters on Sunday

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MEND LEADER TO BE FREED EARLY THIS WEEK

A top Nigerian rebel leader is expected to be freed early this week, his lawyer said on Sunday, but analysts doubt his release will lead to a significant drop in militant attacks in Africa’s biggest oil sector.

Henry Okah, suspected leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), agreed to terms of a federal amnesty programme at the weekend and the government has promised to release him after more than a year in detention.

A presidential aide who attended the meeting with Okah’s lawyers told Reuters the government would on Monday formally withdraw its case against the rebel leader, who is on trial for gun-running and treason.

Although some militants have said they would lay down their arms if Okah is released, analysts believe violence in the Niger Delta will not subside.

Oil theft is a lucrative business in the region and politicians would continue to hire armed gangs to secure power in the run-up to the 2011 elections, analysts said.

“Okah’s decision notwithstanding, it is unlikely that the militia attacks in the Delta will abate any time soon,” Eurasia analyst Sebastian Spio-Garbrah said in a client note.

“Indeed, it is more likely to escalate into 2010 as intense political jockeying ahead of the 2011 general election begins.”

MEND, a loose faction of militant groups that began attacking oil facilities in early 2006, has dismissed the amnesty programme in its current form, but was willing to discuss its demands with the government.

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NIGERIAN INSURGENTS ATTACK LAGOS DOCK

Nigeria’s main rebel group said on Monday it sabotaged a loading dock for oil tankers in Lagos state, the first in the area since the group began its latest campaign of violence against Africa’s biggest oil producer.

The attack comes as the government prepares to release Henry Okah, the suspected leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), after more than a year in detention for suspected arms dealing.

MEND said its fighters set loading tankers and the depot ablaze overnight at the Atlas Cove Jetty in Lagos, a key port where vessels offload gasoline, diesel and other fuel products from refineries in the southeast.

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the attack. Officials from Lagos police and the state-run oil firm NNPC said authorities were investigating.

MEND has rarely attacked sites outside the Niger Delta, focusing mainly on oil facilities in the Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers states in southern Nigeria.

The militant group has claimed a series of attacks against the oil industry following the military’s largest offensive in the Niger Delta for years in late May.

The violence has forced Royal Dutch Shell, U.S. oil company Chevron and Italy’s Agip to shut down around 300,000 barrels per day of production in the last seven weeks, lifting global oil prices.

SOURCED FROM REUTERS