Education, jobs and other social issues dominated campaigning for Tuesday’s presidential election in Niger, with little attention paid to the insecurity that had dogged parts of the country in the past and resurfaced this year. One of the few contenders to broach the issue of insecurity was the incumbent, President Mamadou Tandja, who promised as he launched his campaign on 23 October to tighten up surveillance along the western border, where cattle herders sometimes clashed with rustlers.

"I was my mistress's slave - that was my identity," says Assibit, 50, who ran away from her master in June of this year. After walking 30 kilometres to the nearest village, she was taken by locals to the Timidria office in Abalak. Assibit was born into slavery - as was her mother, her husband and her five children. The government says it is trying to clamp down on slavery - and has introduced laws so that slave owners can be punished - but still there are estimated to be tens of thousands of people in Niger in bonded labour.

Timidria, an organisation that has spearheaded Niger's anti-slavery movement, is being presented with the 2004 Anti-Slavery Award from Anti-Slavery International. Slavery is an integral part of Niger society. Thousands of people are born into a slave class and are forced to work without freedom or pay throughout their lives. The true scale of slavery across the country only became clear last year, following Timidria's research -- the first national study of slavery to be carried out.

It's back to school in most of West Africa, but in one of the region's poorest and most Islamic countries, Niger, the secular public school system is in a state of paralysis, so more and more children are going to Islamic schools instead. Many impoverished children are forced to go begging to pay for their education.

Zeinabou Baba had just about given up on the prospect of living a normal life by the time aid workers arrived in her village of Tera, west of Niger's capital Niamey. Married at the age 16, Baba had experienced four pregnancies that resulted in stillbirths - and the development of a condition known as obstetric fistula. Matters changed, however, when a team from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) arrived in Baba's village, offering assistance to women with fistulas.

A cholera epidemic in villages along the Niger river has killed 27 people over the past four months and threatens to spread to the capital Niamey, a senior government health official said. Doctor Kiari, the head of the National System of Health Information (SNIS), told IRIN that 1,426 cases of cholera had been recorded between 3 May and 15 August, the last date for which figures were available.

On 12 August 2004, Moussa Kaka, director of the independent radio station Saraounia FM and correspondent of Radio France International, was arrested by agents of the Gendarmerie in the capital, Niamey. The security officers also searched Kaka's office and home, confiscating address books and other documents.

Joel Bisina has written an informative article on the Niger Delta (Pambazuka News 167). However there are a few points I would like to add.

Apart from a very brief mention of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Odi, Bisina fails to mention the state sponsored violence that has been taking place for the past 14 years. Nor does he mention the issue of demands for autonomy and resource control made by all the ethnic nationalities (please let us throw the word tribe into the dustbin of colonialism) of the Niger Delta.

When he does mention violence it is in the context of "inter tribal and inter communal conflicts". This implies the conflicts are nothing to do with oil. On the contrary the Federal Government has used divide and rule tactics to fuel conflicts between the different ethnic minorities by favouring one community over another at different times, by redrawing boundaries between communities and by arming one community and instigating murder.

Bisina also fails to include any gender dimension to his article. He mentions the "ethnic militias" and illegal bunkering that takes place by a minority of people but fails to mention the many activist groups and organisations that are fighting to expose the crimes and human rights abuses of the multinationals and their partner, the Nigerian government.

JOEL BISINA REPLIES: Thank you Sokari Ekine, I fully and wholly agree with you that some of the issues you raised are fundamental and are worthy of mention, but I want you to appreciate the fact that the Niger Delta question is as old as the Nigeria Federation and so are the issues and the facets to the issues. Any attempt in a singular write-up in trying to address all will amount to writing an encyclopaedia. So you would excuse my brevity.

I need to state here that I am very conversant and actively involved in the entire Niger Delta struggle at various levels in my professional capacity and as someone from the Region who lives and works there. Just trying to look at state sponsored violence alone will produce volumes. From the days of King Koko of Nembe Brass to the most recent military invasion in Egbema communities of Ogbudugbudu, Idebagbene and Itsekiri communities of Orugbo etc.

>>>>> Click on the link below for the rest of Joel Bisina's response.

I read the article written by Joel Bisina (Pambazuka News 167) and it is an interesting and thought provoking insight on the very ugly, sad and degenerating condition of the Nigeria's Niger Delta Region.

There is a marriage of convenience between the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies operating in the Delta areas of the country. This relationship is unhealthy and inimical to the well being of the Delta people and the entire Nigerian people. It is a case of conspiracy with the majority ethnic power elites and a few Niger Delta elites in league with these oil companies to continue to accumulate petrol dollars from the region to the detriment of the people.

Much as this is the pathetic situation of the Niger Delta, several social and economic contradictions are arising which will slow the processes of positive change in the area. The Niger Delta people seem to be very hostile to people from other parts of the country especially other minorities residing and trying to eke a living in the Niger Delta. Niger Deltans need the support of these people and their peers across Nigeria to achieve social justice. It is not a struggle the Deltans can fight to win alone. They must proactively engage other minority groups in the country to push the agenda further.

The conflict in the Niger Delta is not different from those of the Middle Belt region as they both have to do with so called majority ethnic hegemony dominance of minority groups. While majority ethnic groups in Nigeria have aggressively closed their space against the minorities, they are increasingly encroaching on the space of the minority groups. Central to these problems is the law that gives the Federal government complete ownership of the land of Nigeria. With Federal power being controlled by majority ethnic groups, the struggle will be difficult. However, concerted efforts from the minority groups can change the tide. The problem is land ownership; if we can constitutionally wrestle it from the government, nearly all the conflicts in Nigeria would be solved.

The three parties that back Niger's president on Wednesday won local elections, taking 62 percent of the 3 747 municipal seats in the West African state, the electoral commission said. Voters in Niger went to the polls on Saturday in a poll seen as an important step in paving the way to democracy in one of the world's poorest countries.

Coal may seem like an unlikely weapon to stop the Sahara advancing, but the Niger government is marketing it as an alternative to firewood in order to save the country's forests and slow desertification. The government is halfway through a year-long campaign to make coal more popular, taking out adverts on television and radio and sending delegations from the Mines and Energy Ministry across the West African nation to talk to local leaders.

More and more people in the landlocked desert state of Niger are volunteering to undergo testing for HIV/AIDS as acceptance and understanding of the disease improves, according to health workers in the capital, Niamey. "The image of AIDS has changed. People no longer associate it with death, weight loss, incurability", Doctor Kadidiatu Gouro, the director of the Anonymous and Voluntary Testing Centre (CEDAV) in Niamey told IRIN.

African leaders gathered in Paris on Monday for a conference on the receding waters of the Niger River, the continent's third-longest river and a lifeline that sustains 100 million people. Representatives of nine African countries are trying to come up with an action plan to encourage better management of the water and prevent its levels from dropping further. "The basin is today threatened with becoming a place of desolation and misery," said Niger President Mamadou Tandja, who is head of the Niger Basin Authority.

The medical relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said last Thursday it had launched an urgent vaccination campaign against a measles epidemic in Niger that has led to more than 20,000 cases of the disease and 149 deaths in recent weeks. MSF said in a statement it had begun vaccinating and treating children between the ages of six months and five years in Niamey, the capital of the landlocked Sahelien country, in conjunction with the Ministry of Health.

International creditors of the African nation of Niger have agreed to cancel 1.2 billon dollars of its debt over time under a controversial debt relief scheme, rewarding the country for its pro-free market economic restructuring plan. Niger becomes the 11th nation to reach the completion point of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) - the mark where creditors permanently grant debt forgiveness. But doubts remain over whether the move will actually reduce poverty in one of the world's poorest nations. “Our call is for a 100 percent debt cancellation,” said Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network, a leading group that lobbies for debt forgiveness.

Government troops and members of an armed Islamic group have clashed in recent weeks in the north of Niger, Defence Minister Hassane Bonto told parliament on Tuesday. Bonto said there were three clashes between the armed forces and the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC - le groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat) between 22 February and 5 March.

Niger’s Minister for Social Development and Women's Affairs has called for a government crackdown of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), widely known as female circumcision. The practice was made illegal in this poor West African country three years ago, but it remains widespread and no-one has ever been prosecuted for performing the crude operation.

An oil-spill and ongoing fire in the troubled Niger delta region of Nigeria indicates how badly relations between international oil-companies like Shell and oil-producing communities have deteriorated.

Members of the Elikpokwuodu community in Rukpokwu in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State, say a rupture in a high-pressure, 28-inch pipeline operated by SPDC (Shell's Nigeria affiliate) in December caused the initial oil-spill. The problem with the pipe dates back to 1963, according to the community.

Rukpokwu is about a 5-10 minute drive from the Port Harcourt airport. The oil-spill is on the fringe of a swampy area, 2km along a dirt road, immediately off the airport road on the outer fringes of the oil-city of Port Harcourt proper. Port Harcourt is Shell's operational base in Rivers State. In other words, the spill is on Shell's doorstep but the company has still to put out the fire and clean up the spill.

According to Nigeria's Vanguard newspaper, Chairman of Elikpokwuodu's Community Development Committee Mr. Clifford Walter said "more than three streams from which we fish are affected. Fishing implements were destroyed and SPDC has not responded to this disaster."

"Our only source of drinking water, fishing stream and farm-lands covering over 300 hectares of land with aquatic lives, fishing nets and traps, farm crops and animals," Nigeria's THISDAY reported the Paramount ruler and Chairman of Mgbuchi Community - Chief Clifford E Enyinda and Azunda Aaron respectively - as saying. "Trees worth several billions of naira are completely destroyed by the spillage and was made worst by the three separate fires that broke out of the spill site."

At the time of Stakeholder Democracy Network's (SDN) visit to the site on January 7th, there was a fire at the centre of the spill that was still burning. This was despite several attempts by Shell staff to put this out. The fire was restricted to an area no larger than approximately 20 metres by 20 metres. Surrounding bush and vegetation was charred and destroyed. No visible measures were in place to prevent the further spread of oil downstream, despite obvious risks from rainfall.

There appears to be a continuing underground fire at the spill-site that is periodically re-igniting on the surface, but the causes of this re-ignition are unclear: it could be that the underground fire is spreading back to the surface, but deliberate sabotage cannot be discounted. Shell has been unwilling - or has felt unable - to post someone at the site to monitor the fire, which would make sabotage less likely.

Shell and the affected community are giving conflicting accounts of what has happened. However, one uncontested fact is that - while the initial spill occurred on December 3rd 2003, and was reported to Shell on December 4th - on January 7th Shell was still negotiating 'relief materials' with the Elikpokwuodu community, i.e.: how many bags of rice and temporary water supplies to supply.

According to members of the community SDN spoke to, when Shell staff and contractors visited, they came with an armed mobile-police escort, firing shots into the air. Shell staff excavated the pipeline, acknowledged that the problem was due to corrosion and sought to place a covering clamp over the pipeline. However, Shell workers found the 'clamp' they had brought was not long enough, so they departed without taking further action.

According to Shell press statements, the community denied Shell access to the site of the spill. Shell alleges that "miscreants" set fire to the spill initially, and have re-lit the fire on several subsequent occasions.

Members of the community seized a Shell vehicle that was being used to fight the fire last week. There are indications the vehicle may be released this week, following three-way discussions between the community, the local authorities and Shell.

Roseline Konya, the Rivers State commissioner for environment, had previously made public criticisms of Shell over the Rukpokwu spill. The government would insist on Shell paying adequate compensation to the community, she said. "We also see negligence, delay and lack of good-will from Shell on this matter," Konya told reporters in Port Harcourt according to Dow Jones on January 9th.

This incident is the latest indication that the 'system' for dealing with spill-response is broken. From the perspective of communities and local human rights groups, this is seen as further evidence of Shell's overall attitude to dealing with these incidents: at their own convenience. There is a perceived double standard. Would Shell respond this way to a spill in Scotland or in Texas?

The incident comes at a time when Nigeria is becoming an increasingly important test of the claims of oil companies like Shell to transparency and Corporate Social Responsibility (or CSR, to give it the acronym favoured by policy wonks in Europe and America.) Shell's senior management is coming under pressure from its shareholders to sort out its Nigerian operations.

Shell announced in mid-January 2004 that 3.9 billion barrels of oil and gas, or one-fifth of its reserves, were no longer 'proved' - meaning they can't be retrieved as quickly as thought - much of which are in Nigeria, which is crucial to Shell's over-all operations. Shell's shares have dropped from 401p to 359p following the announcement.

Shell has so-far failed to explain the sudden re-grading of its reserves to angry shareholders, but shut-downs, spills and community conflicts are likely to be one major factor making it difficult for Shell to guarantee its supplies in the delta. Is this a failure of corporate governance generally, or of Shell's approach to "CSR" and community-relations in places like the Niger delta? Shell investors must wait for a presentation on 5th February for an explanation by chairman Sir Philip Watts, but they had earlier called for the resignation of the man who used to run Shell's Nigeria operations.

The debate on the merits of Shell's CSR claims rages on in developed countries, but in Nigeria the standard responses from all sides - oil companies like Shell, and oil-producer communities - involved in a spill like Rukpokwu seems to be producing the perverse outcome of delaying spill-containment.

There are also good reasons to question whether third-parties to spills, like clean-up operators - the main financial beneficiaries of oil-spills in the short run outside of the affected communities - share an interest with community leaders and activists in minimising the impacts of a spill on the environment, and public health and safety.

For its part, Shell's knee-jerk response to 'sabotage' - which has the effect of delaying spill-responses - is fuelling a lack of trust and sense of general grievance in oil-producing communities.

There is growing concern that the frustration felt by oil-producing communities at the failure of the oil-industry to deal with spills quickly and adequately is combining with general political instability in the region, with possibly calamitous results.

"Ethnic conflicts" rage over land in the oil-producing Warri region - to the north of Port Harcourt - which in reality are also part of a wider war between criminal groups and factions in the army, navy and government for control of black-market oil and a host of other related issues.

Following elections in 2003 that were criticised by international observers as unfair, resentment is simmering in the delta. The oil industry extracts billions of dollars-worth of oil from the impoverished region, but the Nigerian government returns a tiny fraction of this to the producer-communities. Much of this disappears through bribery of government officials. Groups like Transparency International routinely rate Nigeria as one of the world's most corrupt countries.

In the Niger delta, local conflicts are combining with a general sense of political and economic disenfranchisement to make a highly combustible mixture. The oil companies must share part of the blame for creating this volatile situation, through their environmental management. The creeks and inlets of the Niger delta are threaded with a network of pipelines, many of which pre-date Shell and other companies' operations in the 1970s. The age and general state of deterioration of pipelines will become a significant issue in the delta more widely, if oil-producing communities' frustration over continuing spills like Rukpokwu build up.

* Tim Concannon is with the Stakeholder Democracy Network

* Please send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to

Managing editor of the weekly "Le Républicain" newspaper, Mamane Abou, was released on bail by the court of criminal appeal in Niamey on January 6, after spending two months in a prison at Say, 56 km outside the capital, for libel. He had been sentenced to six months in prison for "criminal defamation" against the Prime Minister, Hama Amadou and his former Finance Minister, Ali Badjo Gamatié.

A two month long general strike continues to paralyze schools, colleges and universities in Niger, where the government has made serious reforms to the education system in response to demands from the World Bank and international capital. Teachers and students continue to protest against the cuts that have come along with restructuring, which has led to numerous violent confrontations and arrests.