| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Subsaharan |
| 4 dead in central Nigeria in religious violence |
| 2011-01-29 |
| [Arab News] A fight over a game of billiards disintegrated into religious violence in northern Nigeria, leaving at least four people dead among the smoldering ruins of churches and mosques, authorities said Thursday. The attack in the town of Tafawa Balewa in Bauchi state came the same day police said members of a radical Mohammedan sect killed a police officer guarding a voter registration site in northeast Nigeria. The attack showed the continuing ability of members of the Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. Currently wearing a false nose and moustache and answering to Jama'atu Ahlus-Sunnah Lidda'Awati Wal Jihad, or Big Louie... sect to kill at will despite a military and police crackdown, leaving a state police commissioner to admit he cannot guarantee the safety of election officials. The violence also comes ahead of April elections that many worry could ignite simmering ethnic and religious tensions in a country that became a democracy only a decade ago. In Tafawa Balewa, the home of Nigeria's assassinated first prime minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the violence started Wednesday night, said Borno state police Muhammed Indabawa. Indabawa said a group of youths playing billiards got into an argument, which sparked violence in a town familiar to riots between Nigeria's two main faiths. Paramilitary police patrolled the city's streets Thursday as mosques, churches and homes sat destroyed, Indabawa said. The commissioner said he believed soldiers also would join the security crackdown. "We've mounted road blocks at areas leading to the town to avoid a spillover of the crisis to other areas," Indabawa said. Meanwhile, ...back at the ranch... Borno state police commissioner Ibrahim Abubakar told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named on Thursday that an officer in Maiduguri died Wednesday night after being shot while guarding a primary school holding registration equipment. Abubakar said another officer was maimed in an attack by gunnies riding cycle of violences, an assault that follows the pattern of others allegedly committed by the Boko Haram sect in the arid, dusty city. Nigeria is in the midst of an effort to register an estimated 70 million eligible voters before its elections. Abubakar said the attack Wednesday night showed police were unable to defend the university graduates staffing the registration effort. "Voters' registration materials should be kept at the nearest cop shoppes," the commissioner said. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, has attacked churches and engineered a massive prison break in recent months. The violence in central and northern Nigeria comes as President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian who took over Africa's most populous nation after the death of its elected Mohammedan leader, seeks the presidency. Some believe a northern candidate should stand in Jonathan's place to appease an unwritten powersharing agreement in the oil-rich nation's ruling party. While Jonathan overwhelming won the party's recent primary, some fear more violence cutting across the country's ethnic, religious and political lines will come as the election draws near. |
| Posted by:Fred |