Nigerian riot city reported quiet

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 6

Nigerian riot city reported quiet

NZPA-AP Lagos Nigerian Government troops had returned command of security activities to the police in the northeastern state of Gongola yesterday as religious violence that had claimed up to 1000 lives in the last week simmered down, the News Agency of Nigeria stao)rrespondents in Yola had reported that, “normalcy has returned to the area, businesses have reopened and the streets are cleared.* The agency said that it had received no reports of violence yesterActing Governor of Gongola, Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Tweze, who directed government security forces against rioting members of the outlawed Maitatsine Muslim sect, had handed responsibility for state security back to the police, the agency said, . It quoted the Daily

Times” newspaper as saying that the fundamentalists were fleeing north. “They fled the city in disarray following a minor military operation for the total dislodgement of the fanatics over the week-end,” the newspaper was quoted as saying. The agency said that it could not confirm reports that sect members had come under Army or Air force shellfire over the week-end.

The “Daily Times” said that 104 people believed to be members of the sect had been arrested in the state of Bauchi, on Gqpgola’s northern border, and that there had been a handful of arrests in the city of Kaduna. Fighting between the sect and the police began on February 27 when followers of Alhaji Marwa Maitatsine, a self-proclaimed prophet killed in 1980, broke out of police custody and rampaged through Yola-