Contents: The Africa Fund Nigeria Program: Education Informing Action • Nigeria Election Watch • Corporate Social Responsibility • Aid to the Victims of Oppression • Media Outreach • The deaths this summer of Nigerian dictator General Sanu Abacha and the illegally imprisoned President-elec, Moshood Abiola, brought a new general to power amid fresh promises of elections to end decades of brutal military rule. While the new regime has released many political prisoners and improved the human and civil rights climate, its election program has been harshly criticized by human rights and pro-democracy organizations amid widespread fears that the military...
Contents: The Africa Fund Nigeria Program: Education Informing Action • Nigeria Election Watch • Corporate Social Responsibility • Aid to the Victims of Oppression • Media Outreach • The deaths this summer of Nigerian dictator General Sanu Abacha and the illegally imprisoned President-elec, Moshood Abiola, brought a new general to power amid fresh promises of elections to end decades of brutal military rule. While the new regime has released many political prisoners and improved the human and civil rights climate, its election program has been harshly criticized by human rights and pro-democracy organizations amid widespread fears that the military will manipulate the process to the benefit of itself and its ethnic and religious base in the north. In the oil rich Niger River Delta, frustration over decades of repression, pollution and economic exploitation exploded over into armed occupations of Shell, Mobil, Chevron and Texaco oil wells and facilities by local residents, actions that have cut Nigeria’s daily oil output by over a third. With improvements in the human rights climate, two of Nigeria’s most prominent political exiles–Nobel Laureate and democracy leader Wole Soyinka and environmentalist leader Ledum Mitee–returned to hero’s welcome. With Presidential elections scheduled for the first quarter of 1999, The Africa Fund and Nigeria’s main human rights group, the Civil Liberties Organization, have established a partnership to educate Americans about the transition program and work to protect the integrity of the process.
