NIGERIA: LAGOS: RIOTS

Описание: (19 Oct 2000) English/Nat
XFA
The Nigerian government has banned a militant Yoruba nationalist group believed to be behind four days of ethnic fighting in the commercial capital which has killed more than 100 people.

Security forces have been instructed to arrest any members the Odudua Peoples Congress and similar organisations.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, is riven with sharp ethnic and religious divisions that regularly explode into violence.

The order to ban the Yoruba nationalist group followed days of rioting in Lagos between Yorubas and Hausas.

The violence was sparked by the killing on Sunday of a Hausa guard in Lagos' Ajamgbadi neighbourhood.

The guard's relatives blamed his death on members of the Yoruba nationalist group, the O-P-C, who in turn claimed they were pursuing suspected criminals.

Fighting between the northern-based, predominantly Muslim Hausas and the southern, mostly Christian Yorubas spread rapidly to other neighbourhoods.

On Wednesday, Hausa cattle sellers attacked Yoruba butchers at the city's main abattoir and cattle market in the Agege neighbourhood, killing several people.

Nigerian Red Cross Society workers said Wednesday they had collected more than 100 bodies in total from the affected areas.

Yorubas then launched revenge attacks on Hausa settlements in the main business district, where banks, offices and stores shut down and people fled home.

Thousands of terrified residents have fled their homes, seeking refuge at police stations and military bases.

Others took refuge in a mosque during the worst of the fighting.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We have told our brothers and our sisters and our elders, we don't want fights here, we don't want to fight anybody here at all we need peace here."
SUPER CAPTION: Voxpop, local resident

The O-P-C movement is composed of human rights activists, Yoruba tribal leaders and radical youths who advocate a separate state in southwestern Nigeria for Yorubas.

The Federal government made the announcement banning the movement on national television on Wednesday night.

The group's leader, Doctor Frederick Fasheun, was also arrested.

There were reports, however, of the violence spreading from Lagos to the Kaduna region of northern Nigeria.

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