Trouble flares in Nigeria

Press, 13 March 1987, Page 6

Trouble flares in Nigeria

NZPA-Reuter Lagos Troops and police mounted joint patrols yesterday in the tense cities of a northern Nigerian state where 11 people have died in fighting between Muslims and Christians.

The patrols enforced a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed on Wednesday by the military Government, which also closed schools and colleges in the mainly Muslim Kaduna State. The outbreak of mob violence and arson in at least three cities was the worst in Nigeria’s volatile north since 1985.

It was sparked by fighting between rival groups of students last week-end in Kafanchan, a railway town that is one of the few places in the north

with a Christian majority.

Clashes spread to the university city of Zaria and to Katsina.

Nevertheless, the Government said that the situation in the area was under control. Senior members of the Government insisted that the violence was criminal rather than religious.

The violence was the most serious since April, 1985, when 101 people died in the northern city of Gombe after armed police moved against followers of a Muslim prophet from Cameroon, Alhaji Mohammadu Marwa. Thousands of his followers perished in a series of bloodbaths that began in 1980 in Kano, when he was killed.