Nigeria reported calm

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 6

Nigeria reported calm

NZPA-Reuter Abidjan Nigeria has reopened its airports but Lagos radio said ports and land borders were still closed yesterday following this week’s bloodless military coup. A dawn-to-dusk curfew was in force but Western diplomatic sources in London said that the former British colony was calm. Tanks patrolled the streets of Lagos, the capital, where the Army had set up roadblocks. Television pictures seen in neighbouring Benin showed massive traffic jams. The broadcast said that a new Nigerian ruling council would be sworn in today. It confirmed that the former ruling Supreme Military Council headed by MajorGeneral Muhammad Buhari had been dissolved.

The 28-member body headed by the country’s new ruler, Major-General Ibrahim Babangida, retains the Defence Minister, Major-General Domkat Bali and other top military officials, according to the television broadcast. Internal telecommunications, cut after the coup,

were working in Lagos and the northern city of Kano, diplomatic sources said. External telex and telephone links were down. Major Yemi Ogunlayo, speaking on Lagos radio yesterday, said that land borders and ports would stay closed for the time being. The television broadcast said that besides the military council, a national

council of Ministers and a national council of states would be established but did not say when. The broadcast suggested that relations between Nigeria’s new Government and journalists and lawyers, which had deteriorated badly under General Buhari, would improve. General Babangida, aged 43, has accused the Nigerian Security Organisation of human rights abuses and said it would be overhauled, according to Nigerian sources in Abidjan. The coup was the fifth successful one in black Africa’s most populous State since independence in 1960. It was apparently bloodless and directed only against General Buhari and his number two, Major-General Tunde Idiagbon whom General Babangida said had tailed to live up to the hopes raised by a 1983 coup. Military governors in Nigeria’s 19 states, appointed by the previous Government, were still in office, London diplomatic sources said.