Squabbling Rebels, Corruption Cast Doubt on Peace Plan

By WILL CONNORS

THE NIGER DELTA, Nigeria — Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua unveiled an offer in June for rebels to turn in their weapons in exchange for amnesty. Militant leader Ateke Tom watched the news conference on a flat-panel TV at his remote camp deep in this oil-rich expanse of wetlands.

“We want to observe the government’s moves before coming out,” Mr. Tom said a few days later in an interview at his outpost. Outside his concrete residence, young men in camouflage tank tops watched American movies and smoked marijuana in cigar-size joints, their AK-47s lying in the mud beside them.

Mr. Tom, a squat man sporting a G-Unit T-shirt and a gaudy medallion around his neck, said he was negotiating with federal officials, not the state government, which he doesn’t trust. “The governor wants me dead,” he said.

Mr. Tom and other militant leaders have wreaked havoc in recent years on Nigeria’s oil industry — and consequently its economy — from this vast network of densely forested creeks that fan out to the Gulf of Guinea. Now they must decide whether to stop their costly attacks on oil facilities and come out of the creeks once and for all.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s top anticorruption unit filed a raft of criminal charges against ousted managers from five bailed-out banks in connection with billions of dollars in nonperforming loans.

The court filings Monday, which included allegations of share-price manipulation, fraud and money laundering, mark the beginning of what is likely to be a drawn-out legal process. It is the first test of government agencies looking to clean up an ailing banking sector that for years operated with little oversight.

On Aug. 14, the Central Bank of Nigeria announced a $2.6 billion bailout of Afribank, Finbank, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank and Union Bank and fired their executives, saying they had jeopardized Africa’s second-biggest economy with lax management and irresponsible lending.

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