Nigeria's president calls for calm after riots

[April 19, 2011]  LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- Riots broke out again Tuesday in Nigeria's Muslim north, a day after protesters set fire to churches and homes of ruling party supporters when official results from the national election showed that the Christian incumbent had won the vote.

Authorities and aid groups have hesitated to release tolls following the riots for fear of inciting reprisal attacks, but the Nigerian Red Cross said hundreds had been wounded in the postelection violence and that rioting continued Tuesday in the town of Kaduna.

Soldiers had set up a military checkpoint about nine miles (15 kilometers) south of the restive city, where a bomb blast hours after the Saturday vote had wounded eight.

In a televised address to the nation late Monday, President Goodluck Jonathan said that "nobody's political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian."

Supporters of opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari set fire to homes of ruling party members in several areas across the north. Police said an angry mob also engineered a prison break.

In the northern town of Kano, Rev. Lado Abdu said three churches had been set ablaze by angry demonstrators. An armed mob at a bus station also threatened another evangelical pastor before a Muslim man nearby spirited him to safety.

"What brought together religion and politics?" Rev. Habila Sunday said in the local Hausa language. "I want to know why when politics happen do they burn churches?"

Thousands have been killed in religious violence in the past decade in Nigeria, which is Africa's most populous nation. But the roots of the sectarian conflict are often embedded in struggles for political and economic dominance.

While Christians and Muslims have shared the same soil in the nation for centuries, the election result showing the Christian president's more than 10 million-vote lead over Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari spread accusations of rigging in a nation long accustomed to ballot box stuffing.

Jonathan took office last year only after the country's elected Muslim president died from a lengthy illness before his term ended, and many in the north still believe the ruling party should have put up a Muslim candidate instead in this year's election. Monday's violence also was fueled by the economic despair in Nigeria's arid north.

"The region has the worst unemployment, the most grinding poverty, the poorest education, and the shortest life expectancy of any region of Nigeria," the newspaper Next said Tuesday in an editorial. "So stark and repulsive is the poverty, and so thoroughly alienated have the people become, that even this contested election can be seen as little more than an outlet for the expression of deep-seated grievances."

Nigeria has a long history of violent and rigged polls since it abandoned a revolving door of military rulers and embraced democracy 12 years ago. Legislative elections earlier this month left a hotel ablaze, a politician dead and a polling station and a vote-counting center bombed in the nation's northeast. However, observers largely said Saturday's presidential election appeared to be fair, with fewer cases of ballot box thefts than previous polls.

Election chairman Attahiru Jega announced results Monday night that showed Jonathan won 22.4 million votes, compared to the 12.2 million votes of his nearest rival, the former military ruler Buhari.

[Associated Press; By KRISTA LARSON]

Associated Press writer Yinka Ibukun in Lagos, Nigeria and Maggie Fick in Kano, Nigeria contributed to this report.

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