A Christian mob razed a mosque and hacked an electoral worker to death Monday as it barred Muslim organisers of April’s polls from a registration exercise in Nigeria’s Jos region, police said.
Two other people were shot dead when soldiers escorting the workers opened fire after coming under a hail of rocks from the Christian gang. The killings are the latest in a surge of attacks ahead of the April general election.
Shortly before the killings the marauding gang had destroyed a mosque in an attack which took place in a busy downtown part of Jos known as Tina junction.
Plateau state commissioner of police, Abdulrahman Olajide Akano said the youths descended on the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group workers, saying they did not want them to conduct the voter registration exercise.
“We tried to pacify them but they grew wild and even when members of the special task force (STF) were coming to restore law and order at the venue, the restive youths started stoning the soldiers and the soldiers had no choice than to open fire on them in self-defence and two of them died,” Akano told AFP.
A member of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) team that was about to take delivery of voter registration equipment was captured from group and killed.
STF spokesman captain Charles Ekeocha confirmed the INEC staff was killed by the mob and his body “dragged into the road and burnt to ashes.”
Two soldiers were also wounded in the attack and military vans damaged during the attack.
Central Nigeria has seen a wave of violence in recent weeks, including Christmas Eve bomb blasts and reprisal attacks that killed at least 80 people as well as clashes between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups.
A two-week-long nationwide exercise kicked off on Saturday to register some 70 million Nigerians in the build up to the April general elections in Africa’s most populous country.
Shoot to kill
An army spokesman says soldiers patrolling the central region have been given shoot-to-kill orders after an angry mob killed an election official and set his body on fire.
Capt. Charles Ekeocha told The Associated Press on Tuesday the orders allowed soldiers to kill anyone trying to hurt another person or destroy a home, church or mosque around Jos.
Ekeocha said: “The best option is to make sure you stop the person, even if it means taking the person’s life.”