Nigerians Must Fight Threat to Security--Obasanjo
Sun Apr 11, 2004 07:54 AM ET
By Tom Ashby
LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, facing rising opposition
because of rampant corruption and violence, told "unpatriotic elements"
on Sunday not to try to destabilize the world's seventh largest oil exporter.
In an Easter message, the president urged his countrymen to defend Nigeria's five-year-old democracy "against the machinations of evil revisionists" and back his reform plans.
"We must remain constantly alert and ready to thwart any attempt by unpatriotic elements to breach the peace and security of our nation," Obasanjo said.
Obasanjo won elections in 1999, ending 15 years of military rule in the West African country, and won a second term last year in an election observers said was marred by widespread fraud and violence.
"I have not seen anything to convince me of any coup plot," said Beko Ransome-Kuti, a human rights activist who was jailed for three years on suspicion of being an accomplice to an alleged coup plot in 1995. "If there is a coup plot, I find it difficult to believe that the circumstances of the country would support it," he added.
Ransome-Kuti said Obasanjo's warning could have been directed against civil society groups mobilizing against him.
Opposition is growing because critics say Obasanjo has failed to curb massive embezzlement by politicians while two thirds of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day.
Religious, ethnic and political violence has killed 10,000 in five years and continues to claim lives across the country despite a huge military presence in the conflict zones.
There is also a violent feud within the ruling People's Democratic Party for pole position ahead of the next general elections, even though these are three years away.
But few in the country support a military coup after decades of corrupt and incompetent military governments which culminated in Sani Abacha's brutal military dictatorship from 1993 to 1998.
The government said earlier this month it arrested several military officers and civilians in a probe into unspecified "serious breaches of national security."
The Nigerian military have successfully overthrown the government six times since Nigeria's independence in 1960. There have been many more failed coups, and still more alleged coup plots whose existence was never proved.
In his Easter message, Obasanjo urged Nigerians to back his reform agenda, which aims to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy, privatize loss-making state industry and encourage private sector investment, particularly from abroad.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
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