Revenge attacks against Muslims killed at least 20 people in the southeastern Nigerian city of Onitsha on Wednesday after days of anti-Christian violence killed dozens in the mainly Muslim north.
The slaughter raised the death toll from five days of religious riots fueled by political tensions in Africa’s most populous country to at least 66, and possibly many more.
“There are thousands of boys with cutlasses and sticks on the rampage. I’ve counted at least 20 bodies here by the Onitsha bridge. They are Hausas. Some of them are burnt and some have their stomachs cut open,” said Reuters photographer George Esiri.
The Hausa are the main ethnic group in the north, while Onitsha is located in the ethnic Ibo heartland. Rioting started in Onitsha on Tuesday after news of the northern riots emerged.
Nigeria’s 140 million people are split roughly equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, although sizeable religious and ethnic minorities live in both regions.
Religious violence is often stoked by political leaders seeking to bolster their own power bases. Fighting in one part of the country usually sparks reprisal killings elsewhere.
A doctor at the Onitsha general hospital said more than 50 newly injured people had been brought in on Wednesday, while the Red Cross said 325 people were injured and 2,000 displaced on Tuesday. Many were hiding in barracks and police stations.
There was no official death toll from Tuesday’s fighting in Onitsha but a security source said at least a dozen people, possibly many more, were killed.
Political chaos
In northeastern Bauchi, at least 18 people died and 3,000 were left homeless during two days of fighting triggered by rumors of a desecration of the Koran.
That following weekend, riots over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed killed at least 21 people and possibly more than 50 in Maiduguri, another northeastern city.
In Katsina, in the far north, at least seven people were killed during weekend protests over a constitutional review — controversial because many see it as an attempt to keep President Olusegun Obasanjo in power for longer.
Observers, both religious and secular, say that although the triggers were different in the three northern cities, the underlying reason for the unrest is uncertainty over the political future and particularly Obasanjo’s plans.
“The political atmosphere in the nation is already very bad and with high poverty there are a lot of unemployed youths. That is why this kind of crisis starts easily,” said Adamu Abubakar, a Red Cross official in Bauchi.
The violence in Katsina and Maiduguri broke out days before the two cities were due to stage public hearings on constitutional reform.
The hearings are ostensibly to consider many changes to the charter, but most Nigerians think the real goal is to push for an amendment to the section on presidential tenure, to allow Obasanjo to seek a third term in 2007 elections.
There is strong opposition to a third term in the north because many there believe the presidency should go to one of them in 2007, after eight years of Obasanjo, a Christian southerner.