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The Human Rights Impact of Post-Election Gang Violence in Rivers State

In the six-week period from the beginning of July through August 12, 2007, escalating inter-gang violence resulted in dozens of deaths and more than 140 people shot and wounded in the streets of Port Harcourt. The majority of these were ordinary Nigerians who were either caught in the crossfire between rival gangs or were deliberately shot by gang members. In addition to violence in Port Harcourt itself, widespread gang violence subjected other Rivers State communities to patterns of serious human rights abuse. In the worst-affected communities like Ogbogoro outside of Port Harcourt, cult gangs carried out a reign of terror that included acts of murder, rape, and other violent crimes.

Gang Warfare in Port Harcourt

Violence Erupts

On the evening of July 1, heavy fighting between rival gangs was unleashed across the sprawling neighborhood of Diobu, a stronghold of the Deebam cult, and other areas of Port Harcourt.41 Media reports and eyewitness accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch described a scenario that would occur with increasing regularity during the next six weeks. In several different incidents warring gang members opened fire on one another on busy streets, as residents fled in terror.42 In some cases gang members appear to have fired intentionally at local residents. Gang violence is not a new phenomenon in Port Harcourt, but the deliberate and random targeting of civilian residents represented a new and disturbing trend.

In one incident that evening, four young people standing and talking outside one of their homes were shot and wounded. Two of the victims told Human Rights Watch that several armed young men got out of a car and then fired directly at them without warning. One, a young woman, said, “They drove up, stopped their car, then got down and started shooting their guns—there were so many bullets, they left four of us injured.” She was shot in the buttocks; the bullet exited through her abdomen and she required a colostomy. “I still feel pain,” she said more than three months later, “But in fact I was lucky—many people died in those days. Before that they used to shoot here and there, but that was the day they started shooting at people.” 43

The violence on July 1 attracted considerable media attention and the concern of local activists.44 State government and police authorities refused to make public any casualty estimates but media reports estimated that as many as 20 people, including gang members and bystanders, were killed on that one day alone.45 A journalist for Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper who reported these events dubbed July 1 “Black Sunday,” but as it turned out the day’s mayhem was only the beginning.46

Escalating Violence

During July and August the neighborhood of Diobu saw repeated clashes between Deebam cultists and gang members linked to Soboma George. Residents described well armed gang members, some with bandoliers draped around their necks, riding in by the dozen on motorcycles and atop pickup trucks. Diobu was one of the few Port Harcourt neighborhoods that Soboma George and his Outlaws gang did not control. The Deebam faction that held sway there had been allied with Soboma George’s chief rival, Ateke Tom.47  

The fighting in Diobu claimed the lives of an undetermined number of local residents, at least some of whom was deliberately killed by marauding gang members. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than a dozen Diobu residents who witnessed or were victims of this violence.48 However, none of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch could identify the specific gang or name an individual implicated in the violence they had suffered or witnessed. 

One merchant in the Mile 1 area of Diobu saw a gang member shoot and kill an okada (motorcycle taxi)driver just outside his store in early July:

 

I had just closed my shop. Everyone started running when they [gang members] came. One man was spinning around and shooting indiscriminately. A man was trying to park his okada and then we saw him drop. We thought maybe he fell trying to run, but then we saw someone trying to carry him and then we saw the blood coming everywhere.49

The man died from his wounds before he could be taken to a hospital.50

While many of the ordinary residents shot during this fighting appear to have been the victims of indiscriminate gunfire, in several cases gang members deliberately killed people seen outdoors. Echoing the words of many other residents of badly affected neighborhoods, one man told Human Rights Watch that on some days in July and August, “It is any person they s[aw] outside, they will shoot him.”51

In one particularly harrowing incident, three men who had just gotten up from a small outdoor bar one early July evening were shot execution-style by a group of cult members. One man who had taken shelter on the floor of a nearby church heard two gunshots and then got up to peer out through a window. He saw two of the men lying dead in the road and the third on his knees, pleading to an armed young man for his life. “He was begging the boy to stop the shooting [but] he shot him” in the head, the eyewitness told Human Rights Watch.52 The incident was confirmed by other nearby residents, none of whom believed that the victims were involved in cult activity themselves.53 One told Human Rights Watch that “the man who was begging [for his life] was just recently married.”54

Human Rights Watch heard eyewitness accounts of several other shootings during July. One young man was reportedly shot and killed while trying to peer over a wall to see what was happening in the street during one evening rampage by gang members. At least one police officer from the Mile 1 police station in Diobu was shot and wounded while responding to the sound of gunfire near his post. 55

A Climate of Fear

Many residents of badly affected neighborhoods told Human Rights Watch that the escalating gang violence left them in a perpetual state of fear and made it impossible to go about their day-to-day lives in normal fashion. One retiree told Human Rights Watch,

We don’t know the actual cause of the annoyance of these people. This is the main thing we wanted to identify; there are many rumors but we cannot know. But we saw that almost every evening they would come and shoot at random. And as they were shooting there were killings…stray bullets usually go and kill some innocent people who have no knowledge of what is happening. Immediately they came— sometimes you would see a car coming to drive past and the next thing you know they are taking out gun[s] and firing into the air.56

A local community leader told Human Rights Watch that the gang members “want[ed] to flex their muscles to show that they own this place.”57

Residents described regular evening scenes of terrifying chaos as gang members paraded through the streets—sometimes shirtless and masked, sometimes dressed in white and black—firing AK-47 assault rifles into the air and threatening or attacking people they caught outside. Some gang members were draped with strings of bandoliers, while others were armed with heavier weapons including rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Others carried machetes or broken bottles and followed along behind those carrying guns.58

In order to avoid being caught outdoors during outbreaks of violence, which usually began in the evening, many residents began closing shops early, moving evening church services to the afternoon, and generally doing anything possible to avoid being on the streets beyond late afternoon.59 One tailor near Emenike Junction who had to travel some distance between his shop and home each day told Human Rights Watch that “we were closing at twelve noon in order to reach home before those boys came out.”60

Gang Terror in Ogbogoro

There is no starker example than Ogbogoro of a community where cult violence was not just a crime problem but a reign of terror that made ordinary life impossible. Ogbogoro is a modest town near the outskirts of Port Harcourt that has in recent years emerged as a stronghold of the Deebam cult. Local residents say Deebam first came to prominence after being used by local politicians to rig the 2003 elections there.

Deebam members routinely harassed anyone who ventured near their waterfront stronghold, and in some cases subjected residents to acts of terrible brutality.61 In one July or August incident recounted to Human Rights Watch by community leaders and witnesses, Deebam cultists abducted a young woman who had snubbed the advances of a cult member, stripped her naked, and forced her to stand alongside the road near the waterfront for part of an afternoon. No one dared to intervene and she reportedly was ultimately taken away and raped by several Deebam members.62

Incidents such as these terrified ordinary residents, and by July and August 2007 many had left town for Port Harcourt or elsewhere in what one traditional leader described as a “mass exodus.”63 Community leaders said that those who left included some of Ogbogoro’s most economically important citizens.64

On September 7, Ogbogoro’s council of chiefs called a meeting at the town hall to discuss the problem of cult violence. At the meeting elders reached a consensus that they should ask the Joint Task Force (JTF) to enter their town to confront the cultists. But before the meeting ended, Deebam cultists armed with assault rifles arrived from the direction of the waterfront on motorcycles and stormed the building.

The attackers immediately shot and killed two of the town’s traditional rulers, Chief R.O. Amadi and Chief Ebenezer Wali, while the others at the meeting fled. The attackers dragged the body of one chief outside, drove down to the waterfront with it, and dumped it into a garbage heap near the water’s edge.65 When Human Rights Watch visited Ogbogoro several weeks later, long streaks of dried blood were still visible inside the town hall where cultists had dragged the chiefs’ corpses across the floor.66

JTF forces moved in to occupy Ogbogoro soon thereafter, to the great relief of local residents. The JTF’s mixed record in Ogbogoro is discussed in more detail below. Community leaders told Human Rights Watch that when the JTF made their way into the abandoned Deebam stronghold by the waterfront, they found a partly decomposed corpse and parts of several other corpses.67

August: Chaos Takes Hold

From August 6 to 11, the violence that had wracked parts of Port Harcourt since July reached its peak. Cult members aligned with the Ateke and Soboma factions squared off against one another in pitched battles that plunged much of the city and many of its communities into chaos.68 A trauma clinic in Port Harcourt run by the international humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on August 6 reported,

We received an influx of patients coming from all over the city. The patients all basically told us the same story. In several different locations across the city, they said that they were in the market, near the bus station, or standing alongside of the road when armed groups either in vans or on motorbikes started shooting indiscriminately into crowds of people.69

Eyewitnesses and victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch described similar scenes in different parts of the city. Many said they were suddenly caught up in firefights between rival factions or faced with heavily armed gang members who appeared to be firing at random at whoever happened to be nearby.

On August 6, near an area of Diobu called Education Bus Stop, gang members suddenly opened fire at people along the crowded streets. Two nurses returning home from work in the late afternoon came under a hail of bullets. One of the two women was shot and later died from her wounds; the other escaped with a broken hand. The husband of the woman who died told Human Rights Watch that she perished on the operating table of a nearby trauma clinic. He also spoke of his grief:

Going home is a problem for me. It is hard. Because I lived with my wife. Do you know what that is like? She was the last person I spoke with every day. No sickness, no nothing. Just, “I am going to work, see you tonight.” And then you get a call informing you…At moments I am sick. My home has been shattered and other homes are also crying. She was never sick, but she met notorious hooligans, notorious cult boys. At her burial, [from] every area where she had [worked], someone came forward to say one or two good things about her.70 

The same day, less than 800 meters away, another woman was reportedly shot and killed while driving her car near Emenike Junction.71

The violence continued. On the morning of August 10, a schoolteacher was arriving in Port Harcourt by bus after an overnight trip from Abuja. He had traveled to Port Harcourt to inform his sister that their father had passed away a few days earlier. Near Eleme junction, the bus suddenly came to a halt:

I saw men with guns; they had covered their faces with masks so that you could only see their eyes and noses.…They were shooting everywhere from the middle of the street—back and forth—not in the air but straight at people who were running all over. The driver of the bus jumped down and ran.

I came down from the bus—we all got out.…They kept firing in all directions; I saw them firing from about 100 meters away. I ran but a moment later I was hit. I couldn’t get up. I don’t know how long I was there but while I was on the ground I saw five other wounded being taken away. The blood was rushing everywhere. Later some people came and carried me away. In the hospital they found four bullets inside of me.

The man was adamant that the men who shot him were intentionally firing on ordinary civilians. “There was no one shooting at them,” he said. “I didn’t see any police on the road.…No, they were just shooting at innocent people. The road was totally controlled by them.”72

Similar incidents occurred throughout much of the city. Around August 8, residents ran into their homes to seek shelter at the first sound of gunfire. They told Human Rights Watch that when they later emerged from their homes they found local resident Okey Mba, age about 40, lying dead in the road, shot through the chest.73 On the morning of August 11 the bodies of a married couple and their teenage daughter were discovered at a nearby intersection inside of their car. Apparently they had been shot dead early that morning while driving home from an all-night church service. No witness to their killing came forward.74 On one day in early August several ethnic Hausa traders were reportedly shot near a market at Eminike junction by gang members rampaging through the area.75

Ateke Tom’s Attack on the NNPC Filling Station

Early on the morning of August 11, cult fighters aligned with Ateke Tom staged an armed attack on a busy sixteen-pump NNPC filling station located between Government House and the old downtown area of Port Harcourt. As discussed above (see “Background”), the NNPC station was attacked because rival gang members believed that Soboma George was receiving significant sums of government patronage through his partial control over the station’s revenues.76

Human Rights Watch interviewed several people who were either in the area working or went to the scene of the fighting immediately after the attack. Some witnessed what they estimated to be 20 to 30 gang members approaching on motorcycles, two to a bike.77 Witnesses said that the attackers were armed with firearms, machetes, and locally made “dynamite.” The attack largely destroyed the NNPC station. It also claimed the lives of several bystanders and an unknown number of attackers.

Persons who arrived on the scene after the attack told Human Rights Watch that they saw at least seven people lying dead in the road near the filling station, all of whom had been shot. The dead included a van driver shot through the head, his cigarette still dangling from his mouth, and a bread seller who had been making deliveries when the attack began. The remaining deceased were not known to those interviewed by Human Rights Watch. One journalist told Human Rights Watch that later that day he visited the morgue at the Braithwaite Memorial Hospital and counted 11 bodies bearing signs of gunshot wounds brought into the morgue that day.78

The Scale of Civilian Casualties in Port Harcourt

From July 1 through August 12, when the Joint Task Force (JFT) intervened to restore order, Human Rights Watch estimates that at least several dozen civilian residents of Port Harcourt were deliberately killed or were killed in the crossfire between rival gangs; at least 150 more people were shot and wounded. Those figures do not include most of the gang members who were wounded or killed during the violence. 

Residents Wounded in the Fighting

Medical personnel told Human Rights Watch that during the six-week period from July to mid-August, at least 148 people were treated for gunshot wounds in Port Harcourt. The large majority of those injuries were directly linked to the violence described above.79

According to medical professionals, residents of affected communities, and civil society activists, the vast majority of people suffering gunshot wounds sought treatment at an MSF trauma clinic at Teme Hospital in Diobu. MSF publicly reported that their clinic treated 74 gunshot wounds in July—at the time their worst month on record—followed by a further 72 gunshot victims in the first two weeks of August. The clinic admitted 18 persons with gunshot wounds on July 1 and 21 and on August 6; roughly 8 per day on August 7-9; and 15 people on August 11, the day of the fighting near the NNPC filling station.80

In addition to the wounded who were treated at Teme Hospital, a surgeon at Braithwaite Memorial Hospital told Human Rights Watch that the hospital had treated five people who were shot and wounded during the August fighting.

Fatalities

Accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch yielded eyewitness reports of more than a dozen killings of ordinary residents by cultists.81 Employees of the private Kpainma mortuary in Diobu told Human Rights Watch that it received a dozen dead who had lost their lives during the fighting; some of those may have been the same people whose deaths were recounted to Human Rights Watch by witnesses around Diobu. Teme Hospital in Diobu reported that seven of its patients died from gunshot wounds suffered during the first two weeks of August. At least four people died while receiving medical care for gunshot wounds suffered in July.82

Rivers State government officials and the Nigerian police have not produced any official casualty figures. Some officials appeared to be downplaying the extent of the casualties, while others took active steps to prevent the dissemination of that information.83

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, Rivers State Commissioner of Police Felix Ogbaudu would not provide any figures or estimates of civilian casualties, citing without explanation a need to dissuade “journalists and others” from “fabricating information to dissuade investors and business people.”84 Okey Wali—Rivers’ attorney general at the time of the crisis—told Human Rights Watch that the state government had no figures or even rough estimates of civilian casualties because that responsibility rests with the police: “The police should have their figures,” he said.85 A JTF spokesperson also would not offer any estimate as to the number of people killed during the July and August violence, including JTF casualties or the number of people killed or injured by JTF personnel.86




41 Human Rights Watch interviews with Diobu residents, activists , and cult members (names withheld), Port Harcourt, September and October 2007.

42 See, for example, Jimitota Onoyume, “Black Sunday Evening in Port Harcourt,” Vanguard (Lagos), July 7, 2007.

43 Human Rights Watch interview with a shooting victim (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 8, 2007.

44 Human Rights Watch telephone interviews with civil society activists (names withheld), July 3 and 4, 2007.

45 Onoyume, “Black Sunday Evening in Port Harcourt,” Vanguard.

46 Ibid.

47 Human Rights Watch interviews with a former gang member (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 2007; Human Rights Watch interview with a current mid-ranking Deebam member in Diobu (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 2007.

48 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Diobu, Port Harcourt, October 5 and 7, 2007.

49 Human Rights Watch interview with a merchant (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

50 Ibid.

51 Human Rights Watch interview with a resident (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

52 Human Rights Watch interview with a resident (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

53 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5 and 7, 2007.

54 Human Rights Watch interview with a resident (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

55 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5 and 7, 2007.

56 Human Rights Watch interview with an elderly resident (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 7, 2007.

57 Human Rights Watch interview with local community leader (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 7, 2007.

58 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Port Harcourt, September and October 2007.

59 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Port Harcourt, September and October 2007.

60 Human Rights Watch interview with a tailor (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

61 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Ogbogoro, Rivers State, October 10, 2007.

62 Human Rights Watch interviews with community leaders and other residents (names withheld), Ogbogoro, October 10, 2007.

63 Human Rights Watch interview with a traditional leader (name withheld), Ogbogoro, October 10, 2007.

64 Human Rights Watch interview with community leaders (names withheld), Ogbogoro, October 10, 2007.

65 Human Rights Watch interviews with witnesses (names withheld), Ogbogoro, October 10, 2007.

66 For another account of some of these events, see Lydia Polgreen, “Gangs Terrorize Nigeria’s Vital Oil Region,” New York Times, November 9, 2007. For a visual account, see also accompanying multimedia feature, New York Times, “Nigeria’s Gang Violence Escalates,” November 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/08/world/1109-NIGERIA_index.html (both accessed November 10, 2007).

67 Human Rights Watch interviews with community leaders (names withheld), Ogbogoro, Rivers State, October 10, 2007.

68 See Ahamefula Ogbu, “15 Feared Killed as Rival Groups Clash,” This Day (Lagos), August 8, 2007. Over the course of those six days, fighting raged in several different areas of the city including Diobu, Lagos bus stop (very close to Government House), Abonnema Wharf, Eleme Junction, Njemanze, and Rumuolemene

69 “MSF Trauma Center Admits 71 Gunshot Victims Over Two Weeks in Port Harcourt, Nigeria,” Médecins Sans Frontières press release, August 13, 2007, http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/2007/08-14-2007.cfm (accessed December 12, 2007).

70 Human Rights Watch interview with the widower of a shooting victim (names withheld), Port Harcourt, September 29, 2007.

71 Human Rights Watch interview with local journalist, Port Harcourt, October 5, 2007.

72 Human Rights Watch interview with schoolteacher (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 8, 2007.

73 Human Rights Watch interview with neighbors of Okey Mba (names withheld), Port Harcourt, October 7, 2007.

74 Human Rights Watch interview with a journalist (name withheld), Port Harcourt, October 6, 2007.

75 Human Rights Watch interviews with Diobu residents, Port Harcourt, October 2007.

76 See above, chapter “Background,” section “Immediate Causes of the July and August 2007 Violence in Rivers State.”

77 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents (names withheld), Port Harcourt, October 1, 2007.

78 Human Rights Watch email correspondence with a London-based journalist (name withheld), October 8, 2007.

79 Human Rights Watch interviews with doctors and other medical staff, Port Harcourt, September and October 2007.

80 “MSF Trauma Center Admits 71 Gunshot Victims Over Two Weeks in Port Harcourt, Nigeria,” MSF Press release.

81 Human Rights Watch interviews with residents and witnesses (names withheld), Port Harcourt, September and October 2007.

82 Human Rights Watch interviews with medical personnel (names withheld), Port Harcourt, October 2007.

83 See below, chapter “Looking Forward,” section “The Rivers State Government.”

84 Human Rights Watch interview with Felix Ogbaudu, Rivers State commissioner of police, Port Harcourt, October 8, 2007.

85 Human Rights Watch interview with Okey Wali, then-Rivers State attorney general, Port Harcourt, October 10, 2007.

86 Human Rights Watch interview with JTF Spokesperson Maj. Sagir Musa, Port Harcourt, October 7, 2007.