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Nigeria: Villagers flee as army ultimatum expires
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You are posting a comment or a review on the topic "Nigeria: Villagers flee as army ultimatum expires." Author information is available below. Scroll to the botton of the message to post your comment.
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Message and Author Information: IRIN.
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Posted on: 25 July 2002, 04:20, from , ,
In Category: Society_and_Culture
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LAGOS - Hundreds of people have been fleeing the Yelwa and Shendam districts in central Nigeria’s Plateau State following the expiry of an army ultimatum for communities in the area to return weapons taken from a soldier and a policeman killed while on a peace mission, residents said.
Many residents said they feared reprisal attacks by soldiers were imminent after the ultimatum expired on Wednesday. Many have taken refuge in the state capital, Jos, while others headed to other districts that had not been affected by ethnic clashes which broke out in the area in June.
"I have taken my wife and children to Jos for safety and many people have fled to other parts of the state for the same reason,” Joshua Dabup, a resident of Yelwa, told IRIN. He said he would return after a few days but would not take his family back until felt the danger had passed.
Brig-Gen Ben Akpunonu, head of a military task force in charge of maintaining security in the increasingly volatile Plateau State, said last week the army would go in search of the weapons “and deal with that situation decisively” if they were not returned by Wednesday. The dead soldier and policeman had been part of security reinforcements sent to Yelwa late in June following clashes between Muslims and Christians that also spread to the state's Shendam, Wase and Langtang districts.
The military have been known to deal harshly with communities where soldiers have been killed.
In October last year soldiers invaded and ransacked several villages in Benue State, also in the central region, and killed more than 200 people in an apparent reprisal for the killing of 19 of their men by a local militia. Two years earlier in November 1999, troops razed the town of Odi in the southern oil region and left hundreds dead after militant youths killed 12 policemen.
Clashes between mainly local Christians and Muslim settlers from farther north became frequent in Plateau State following ethno-religious disturbances in Jos in September 2001, when at least 1,000 people were killed in a week of fighting.
Tension had been building up since 2000, when some 12 states in Nigeria's northern region began to adopt strict Islamic or Sharia law, which prescribes death by stoning for adultery, amputation of limbs for stealing and public flogging for drinking alcohol.
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