adminViolence between Sunday and Tuesday in both Kaduna and Yobe states left at least 101 people dead. Round-the-clock curfews have been slapped on both areas.
Abubakar Tsav, a respected former police chief for the economic capital Lagos who now lives in Kano, the largest city in the north, said he feared that more reprisals could lead to chaos.
Christian leaders and others have warned in recent days that the government’s failure to stop Islamist group Boko Haram could lead to more cases of residents taking the law into their own hands.
The potential for further reprisal violence poses unsettling risks for the continent’s largest oil producer — a country of some 160 million people, roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
“We now have a dangerous situation because things are literally in free fall,” said Matthew Kukah, a Catholic bishop and respected voice among both Christians and Muslims who has served on various national reform committees.
“If the government is failing to deal with the situation in that way, we are becoming increasingly vulnerable.”
Criticism has mounted over the government’s response to the violence, with few public indications of what strategies are being employed beyond heavy-handed military raids to stop the onslaught of attacks that has killed hundreds.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s comments have often been limited to reassurances that the attacks will soon end. He provoked criticism when he left for a UN environmental summit in Rio on Tuesday as more riots broke out.
A frontpage headline on Tuesday in national newspaper The Punch blared: “Jonathan off to Brazil as Kaduna, Yobe burn.” — AFP/Xinhua.
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