Nigerian Mobs Burn Churches, Mosques as 10,000 Flee Violence

By Dulue Mbachu

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Fighting between Christian and Muslims in the Nigerian city of Jos entered a third day as mobs burned churches, mosques and homes, leaving at least 80 dead and forcing 10,000 to flee.

“So far more than 80 bodies have been brought into the mortuary here,” Yakubu Ayuba, a worker at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, the city’s main hospital, said by phone yesterday. “Many more are dead going by the accounts of witnesses.”

About 10,000 people have fled their homes and are taking refuge in military and police compounds, Okon Umoh, a Nigerian Red Cross spokeswoman, said by phone from Abuja, declining to give figures for the dead. The death toll exceeded 350, according to This Day newspaper, based in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.

The violence followed local elections in Plateau state on Nov. 27, with fighting flaring in the capital Jos between indigenous, mainly Christian Berom people and predominantly Muslim Hausa-speaking settlers supporting rival candidates.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 140 million people, is almost evenly split between a mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. Parts of the country’s center fall into a religious fault-line that erupts periodically into violence.

Plateau state Governor Jonah Jang declared a night-time curfew on the city Nov. 28, and ordered troops to shoot rioters on sight in a bid to curb the city’s worst violence in seven years. Rival mobs defied the curfew yesterday, engaging in street battles and attacking people suspected of belonging to the opposing side, witnesses said.

‘Many Houses Burnt’

“Some of the worst fighting has occurred in Bauchi Road and Nassarawa Gwom areas where hundreds of cars and many houses were burnt,” said Chimezie Onuogu. The Jos resident said in a telephone interview yesterday that he fled with his family to a police station for refuge.

The local government elections resulted in victory for the Christian-backed ruling People’s Democratic Party, which won in all 17 councils including Jos city. The results prompted protests by supporters of the Muslim-backed opposition All Nigeria People’s Party.

More than 700 people were killed in sectarian violence which erupted between Christians and Muslims in Jos in September 2001. Another 500 people were killed in 2004 when violence broke out in the Plateau state town of Yelwa between Muslim Hausa- speakers with origins farther in the north and the indigenous Berom people.

Several thousand people have died in ethnic, religious and communal violence in different parts of the country since the end of decades of military rule in Nigeria in 1999 lifted the lid on long-suppressed grievances.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dulue Mbachu in Lagos at dmbachu@bloomberg.net