Hundreds dead in Nigerian post-election riots

2011-04-21 10:32:42 GMT+7 (ICT)

ABUJA, NIGERIA (BNO NEWS) -- Over 200 people have died and scores injured or displaced in Nigeria after Goodluck Jonathan's election victory, a Nigerian rights group said Wednesday.

Police have arrested hundreds of rioters, who have burned churches, mosques, homes and shops, protesting Jonathan's presidential victory. A number of people have been stabbed, hacked, and even shot to death, according to Xinhua news agency.

In the northern city of Kaduna, hundreds of the wounded have been hospitalized with injuries caused by bullets and machetes. Meanwhile, 32 Christians were killed and 82 churches burnt in northeast Bauchi state in the three days of violence caused by Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) supporters.

The violence broke out following Saturday's presidential vote. Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner, defeated Muslim northerner, Muhammadu Buhari. The opposition claims the election was rigged.

The chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Musa Tula, said at a press conference that Christians will not participate in the remaining elections unless there is security and stability.

"We are really shocked and short of words at the level of violence and mayhem that followed, most of which was unleashed and targeted at our unsuspecting members and their property," he said, as cited by the Daily Independent.

"Are all these happenings part of the Islamic jihad on Christians? Why are all these targeted at Christians? This continues to beat our imagination. What is the connection between political election result and the killing of Christians and burning of our churches? For the Christian North, we have our choice already."

Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission on Monday said Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party received 57 percent of the votes, or 22,495,187 votes out of a total valid votes cast of 38,209,978, while Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari of the CPC gathered 12,214,853 votes.

Following the weekend's voting, Jonathan became the first president from an ethnic minority group to be voted in as President.

International monitors said Saturday's election, in which tens of millions of votes were cast, could be Nigeria's first credible vote for decades. Voting was reported to have generally gone smoothly, despite some reports of fraud and incidents of violence, including two bomb explosions in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri.

Nigeria has a history of violent and deeply flawed elections. Observers from the European Union described the 2007 elections as among the worst they had witnessed anywhere in the world. At least 300 people were killed, and many others injured, in violence linked to the elections.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-04-21

Good luck Goodluck, you're going to need it - There are echoes of the Ivory Coast and Sudan situations here where politics are based on religion then war or even genocide can follow.

there wont be Ivory coast or sudan situation.

The people that call the shots have the most to lose in a sustained strife.

The miscreants could all be gassed without anyone missing them.

Any idea of 170 million fighting amongst themselves should really scare the world. And outside support would be evenly divided. Unlike the 67-70 drama, that saw the US and Europe particularly Britain and France supporting the massacre and blockade of Southern Nigeria.

Nigeria sits right on a fault line between civilisations and so there is always the potential for this sort of violence. Henderson's clash of civilisations paper again springs to mind and the world is certainly full of division and strife at the moment.