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Calm Returns To
Onitsha
Chukwujekwu Ilozue (Onitsha)
Segun Adeleye (Abeokuta) and Sade Ayodele
(Lagos) Normalcy has returned to
Onitsha, the commercial nerve centre of Anambra State, after two days of
violence that left several persons dead. Lagos and Ogun State
Governments as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) drew on the
lessons on Thursday as they took measures to avoid such needless
pain. It was the day Onitsha
monarch, Alfred Achebe, visited and commiserated with about 5,000
Northerners taking refuge at the 302 Artillery Regiment, the Army barracks
in the city. He said the people now
suffering did not even know the origin of the cartoon of Prophet Muhammed,
published in a Danish newspaper, which led to killings in the North that
spread to Onitsha. Corpses still litter the
Benin-Onitsha-Enugu Expressway. Achebe urged residents to heed
the advice of President Olusegun Obasanjo and religious leaders who
appealed for calm. "Differences should be
addressed through dialogue and not violence. All sections of Onitsha
metropolis should live together as they have always done in the past,
despite differences in language, race and religions", he
added. According to him, the people
of Onitsha believe in the right of citizens to live together, and that the
burning down of houses is alien. Achebe urged the law
enforcement agencies to re-enforce security in the city and implored the
inspector general of police and others to end the
killings. An investigation panel should
be instituted to determine the cause of the riot, he advised, adding that
people should go back to their businesses and shun
rumour. The commander of the regiment,
Col. Lucas Logagwoma, had given him a run down of the situation, saying
5,000 people are taking refuge in the barracks. He said the 70 of them who are
wounded were sent to the hospital but returned for fear of their
lives. The victims are taking refuge
in the mosque and church in the barracks. According to Logagwoma, the
Army barely feeds them and provides medicaments but Governor Chris Ngige
has promised to send more doctors and relief
materials. He denied that soldiers joined
Muslims to kill school children and appealed to Achebe to urge the people
to go back to their homes and stop rioting. State Comptroller of Prisons,
Sule A. Danyaya, inspected the burnt prison offices on Thursday and
described the act as "very, very bad". His Deputy, Columbus Omenuko,
took him round the premises and narrated the event of Wednesday to
him. Omenuko said 20 inmates who
escaped had returned, following radio and television announcements that
they return. He stressed that those who
failed to return after Thursday would be declared wanted and a search
party raised to fish them out. The Lagos State Government and
religious leaders met and mapped out strategies on how to prevent the
religious crisis from spreading to the state. A committee was inaugurated by
Governor Bola Tinubu to start work on the management of religious
matters. The meeting called on the
adherents of the two main religions, Islam and Christianity, to shun any
one who may want to use them to initiate conflict. Tinubu noted that though the
rights of the people to protest unpleasant situations cannot be taken away
from them, it should be done peacefully. His words: “We should not
allow evil to set us against one another. These perpetrators, who have
lost politically, are only using this medium to gain popularity. We should
think beyond the surface and know that they are only out there to cause
confusion in the polity. By ignoring
them, we would have taken away the victory they want to
achieve”. Ansa-Ud-deen
Society National Missioner, Abdurahman Ahmad, noted that the protest is
legal but that the violence accompanying it is
illegal. He called
for accommodation of one another’s religions. Catholic
Archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, urged Lagosians to
continue to make Lagos the peaceful state others have emulated for
years. Speaking
through his representative, John Aniagwu, he said those fomenting
trouble with the cartoon do
no have any religion to claim, as those who professes God will allow Him
to judge any circumstance. Police in
Ogun State have taken measures to
forestall the sort of reprisal killings seen in
Onitsha. It was
learnt that Commissioner of Police, Joseph Apapa, has ordered that a full
unit of the anti-riot mobile police squad be on standby in Abeokuta. In the same
vein, an inter-religious meeting was held by Christian and Muslim leaders
where it was agreed that the various groups should urge their followers to
eschew violence. The
communique signed by 2O leaders of both faiths condemned the killings,
describing them as being perpetrated under political
guise. They praised the people of the
state for living in peaceful co-existence, "more so as there is no family
in the state without a mixture of both religions in
abundance". In Abuja,
FCT Police Commissioner, Lawrence Alobi, informed a meeting of all
religious and community leaders that intelligence report shows that some
people are planning mayhem in the FCT, and warned such people to desist as
the command will deal with trouble makers. He reminded
them that both Christianity and Islam teach peace and love, and wondered
why people who profess such teachings would kill
others. “Abuja is
the centre of unity of this country and we should be conscious of and
sensitive to what is happing in other places. We should not allow such to
happen here”, Alobi said. All the religious and
community leaders pledged that they will do everything within their power
to ensure that peace reigns in Abuja. |
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