With a wrenching suddenness, Nigerians moved from anticipating the release from prison of their would-be president to pondering how he had suddenly been taken from them.
For some, the result was rage: Police and youths squared off in sporadic street skirmishes, and plumes of smoke swirled over several cities. Nineteen were reported dead in the clashes, but some estimates put the total far higher.
The unrest came in the wake of the sudden death of the country’s most prominent political detainee, Moshood Abiola, the presumed winner of the 1993 presidential election. The government announced Tuesday that he had died of a heart attack.
Nigeria’s military ruler, Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, seeking to lessen the outrage, dismissed his Cabinet and then assured the nation in a televised speech that he had been on the verge of releasing Abiola when the 60-year-old politician and businessman died.
Abubakar called Abiola’s death a “national tragedy” and said an autopsy would be performed with the help of physicians from the U.S., Britain and Canada. He reaffirmed his vow to restore civilian rule to this potentially rich West African nation, though he said he would address the nation’s administration “in due course.”
“In the meantime, I appeal to you all to remain calm despite your understandable grief,” Abubakar said.
Abiola’s supporters, many of whom refuse to believe he died of heart failure, condemned the general’s five-minute speech for falling short of the assurances that the regime would relinquish power quickly. Many predicted that violence would continue to plague Nigeria’s streets.
“Then why didn’t he release Abiola five days earlier?” asked Rev. George Ehusani, deputy secretary general of Nigeria’s Catholic Secretariat. “We can only plead with people to exercise restraint, but they have the right to be outraged. We don’t want the military around even one more day.”
With the help of steady rain, police appeared to quell at least some of the violence Wednesday afternoon. Before that, Lagosians said the rioting was the worst since the military regime annulled the presidential election that Abiola apparently had won or when it jailed the billionaire in 1994 after he declared himself president.
By evening, the official death toll from the fires, stone throwing and looting had reached 19. Workers arriving at their offices in the morning described seeing scores of bodies from the most intense disturbances the previous night, and some diplomats estimated the real toll as high as 100.
Throughout the day, gangs of youths terrorized residents, attacking shops and blocking roads through the city’s poorer districts with bonfires made of crates and tires dragged into the streets. Almost as soon as the fires were lit, police and soldiers in trucks screeched onto the scene, firing shots in the air and clearing the road for drivers to race through.
“Turn back! Turn back! They’ll burn your car!” one youth shouted as he ran into traffic from under an overpass where a gang had lit a fire and was beckoning cars.
Not everyone reversed fast enough. Among the debris in the road from the night before was a gutted Coca-Cola truck and a burned-out mini-van, each surrounded by bonfire ashes and broken glass.
Just as drivers found themselves boxed in by the fires, workers and pedestrians were stranded and vulnerable along the roads because offices closed early and public transportation was not operating. At midday, hundreds of office workers were walking over the bridge from the Lagos Island business district toward home.
“This is mostly the work of `area boys’ (gang members) taking advantage of the chance to loot,” said Farouk el-Khalil, whose family owns a bottling plant in the thick of the downtown disturbances.
“One of my staff got caught between boys throwing stones and police firing at them. She was all right, but some stones hit the car,” he said.
The government canceled all school classes in Lagos through Friday.
Riots also were reported in Abiola’s hometown of Abeokuta, about 45 miles north of Lagos.
The palaces of two traditional rulers considered friends of the regime were burned. In the university town of Ibadan, more than 1,000 students marched and protested. Several deaths were reported in each city.
More ominous were isolated incidents of youths from Abiola’s southern-based Yoruba ethnic group apparently targeting members of the northern-based Hausa tribe, which produces many of Nigeria’s army generals and has dominated the nation’s politics for most of the last three decades.
In what could be acts of revenge for Abiola’s death, diplomats and journalists said Yoruba youths attacked Hausa-owned businesses and homes in Lagos and other cities, razing some of them.
Some youths in Lagos also reportedly were stopping cars, asking the occupants to which ethnic group they belonged and attacking those identified as Hausa.
Nigeria has more than 250 ethnic groups and suffered through a devastating civil war in the 1960s after southeastern tribes seceded and declared themselves the independent state of Biafra. As many as 1 million Nigerians died during the war.
One oasis of calm just after dawn Wednesday was Abiola’s villa in central Lagos, where a mood of shock and despair was broken only by the intermittent wailing of women mourners who had gathered during the night.
Among the inscriptions written in a condolence book under a portrait of Moshood K.O. Abiola was: “Justice and peace elude Nigeria. R.I.P.-M.K.O.”
In Abuja, the capital, other family members and Abiola’s doctor worked to arrange the autopsy, which could be conducted before the end of the week.
The family waived the Muslim tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours.
Family members said two of Abiola’s most senior wives, his eldest son and at least two grandchildren met with him Monday.
It was the first time they had seen him since his incarceration four years ago.
Expectations for Abubakar’s speech ballooned well before the government announced he would address the nation. Wednesday was the end of an official 30-day mourning period for former despot Sani Abacha, who also died of a reported heart attack.
“It’s important that they move rapidly into the next stage–the unconditional release of all political detainees and the program to move to civilian government as soon as it can be done,” U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering, who was meeting with Abiola when he died, said before leaving Nigeria.
Abubakar offered no conclusions from the “consultative” meetings he has been holding around the country nor did he indicate whether he will stick to his Oct. 1 target date to hand over power.
He also declined to mention dismissal of his Cabinet, which was announced by the government earlier in the day.
The 34 Cabinet ministers, a mix of military and civilian officials, had been chosen by Abacha, so dismissing them was an easy move for Abubakar. Critics noted that Abubakar didn’t name a Cabinet, essentially concentrating for now more power in the hands of the military’s 15-man Provisional Ruling Council.
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