THOUSANDS OF people have fled their homes in northern Nigeria, after post-election violence swept through cities in the region.
Aid agencies did not want to put an exact figure on how many had died in clashes following Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential win, but the Red Cross said they were treating 368 people and that at least 17,000 were displaced from their homes.
"The situation has calmed down now but a lot of innocent people have been killed," Umar Mairiga, national disaster management co-ordinator for the Nigerian Red Cross told The Irish Times. "It started with young men burning bonfires in the streets but quickly degenerated into the burning of churches and mosques."
Nigeria’s second largest city Kano was among the worst affected, but aid agencies said violence spread across at least six states.
Mr Jonathan’s main rival Gen Muhammadu Buhari sought to distance himself from the violence by condemning it, but his Congress for Progressive Change party went ahead with a complaint to the country’s electoral commission alleging massive rigging in Mr Jonathan’s Niger Delta homeland.
It also alleged that the computer software used to tally results had been tampered with, despite assertions by election observers that the election was Nigeria’s cleanest in decades.
In a televised address to the country, Mr Jonathan said that “nobody’s political ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian”. He appealed to people to “stop this unnecessary and avoidable conduct, more so at this point in time when a lot of sacrifice has been made by all the citizens of this great country in ensuring the conduct of free and fair elections”.
Mr Jonathan's win in Saturday's election stoked tensions in the largely Muslim north over perceived foul play. However, the outbreak of violence that followed "may fall into the old pattern of ethno-religious attack and retaliation", said Sebastian Boe, a Nigeria analyst with IHS Global Insight in London.
The two main opposition parties are regionally based, one in the north and one in the south, he said, accentuating north-south cultural and political rivalry. The two main opposition parties are regionally based, one in the north and one in the south, he said, accentuating north-south cultural and political rivalry.
“It is not a particularly great leap for this political regionalism to translate itself into the familiar north-south cultural and political rivalry, hence the ease with which demonstrations against the victory of the ruling party have slid into church burnings and attacks on those perceived to be Christian or southern.”
Mr Jonathan, who took over the presidency in April 2010 when the northerner Umaru Yar’Adua died, now has a tough job bringing Nigeria’s two regions together. With 150 million people, the country is Africa’s most populous, but it is deeply divided along religious as well as economic lines. While the south boasts the business and economic hub of Lagos and the oil rich Niger Delta, people in the north are far poorer and less educated.