North Nigerian rioters to be shot on sight

Press, 14 March 1987, Page 10

North Nigerian rioters to be shot on sight

NZPA-Reuter Lagos The Nigerian Army has warned that it will shoot rioters in the northern state of Kaduna, where religious clashes have claimed at least 11 lives. Brigadier Peter Ademokhai, commander of the Army’s division based in Kaduna, said the measure was necessary to prevent a breakdown of law and order. The state has been under a dusk-to-dawn curfew since Wednesday after mobs ran riot, burning Christian churches and sacking bars in several cities.

Brigadier Ademokhai put the number of arrests in Kaduna City at 360. The News Agency of Nigeria reported that another 400 people were arrested in the university town of Zaria, just north of Kaduna, where student riots last year claimed 16 lives.

The trouble started last week-end in Kafanchan, a small Christian enclave in the predominantly Muslim north, after a revival service by a Christian students’ association.

The rioting spread to neighbouring Kano state,

but was confined within the campus of Bayero University in the ancient city of Kano, where the Emir, the traditional ruler, broadcast an appeal for calm. Since 1980, „ when Muslim fanatics in Kano fought a battle with security forces in which thousands of people were killed, religious rioting in the north has been a recurrent problem. The fanatics were followers of a Muslim prophet from Cameroon nicknamed Maitatsine, who was killed in the Kano battle. There has been no word that the Kaduna riots involved Maitatsine followers', who were reported last February to be regrouping in the north.

Senior members of the Government have insisted that the latest trouble is not religious, and is being fomented by "misguided elements” to cause confusion.

Several states in the north have banned all forms of open-air religious preaching, including playing religious cassettes, to avert clashes between sects.