Uneasy calm returns to Nigeria

  1. Posted on Monday 1 December 2008 - 08:38
    accreporter
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    Kent Mensah, AfricaNews editor, Ghana Office Photo: Nigeria President Yar'Adua
    Curfew in the central Nigerian area of Jos is to be relaxed on Monday following the return of an uneasy calm. The army brought under control clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs which killed hundreds of people over the weekend. A disputed local election in the city triggered the two-day fight.
    nigerian president
    Nuhu Gagara, Plateau state information chief, said there had been no reports of violence overnight and that state governor Jonah Jang would meet with security chiefs to discuss easing a 24-hour curfew imposed on the worst-hit neighbourhoods, Reuters news agency reported.

    "The curfew will not be lifted today, but it could be relaxed," Gagara said. The clashes resorted in the burning of homes, mosques, shops and churches deepening rival ethnic and religious tension.

    Media reports say it is the worst unrest in Africa's most populous nation for years. Gagara said on Sunday that the preliminary figures from the police showed around 200 people had been killed. But witnesses put the death toll much higher.

    An official at the main mosque, Murtala Sani Hashim, who has been registering the dead as they are brought in, told Reuters he had listed 367 bodies. A senior doctor at the Jos University Teaching Hospital said he had received 25 dead and 154 wounded.

    Nigeria's 140 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two communities generally live peacefully side by side.

    But ethnic and religious tensions in the country's "Middle Belt" run deep. Hundreds have been killed in ethnic-religious fighting in Jos, capital of Plateau state, in the past.

    The tensions are rooted in decades of resentment by indigenous minority groups, mostly Christian or animist, who are vying for control of fertile farmlands with migrants and settlers from the Hausa-speaking Muslim north.

    The latest clashes between gangs of Muslim Hausas and mostly Christian youths began early on Friday and were provoked by a local government chairmanship election after news spread that the ANPP party candidate backed by Hausas had lost the race.

    Results showed the ruling PDP party candidate won but his swearing in, originally due on Monday, has been postponed.

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