Relief groups aid clash victims amid reprisal fears in north

Efforts to provide relief aid for victims of ethnic clashes in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, continued on Friday as fears of reprisal attacks rose in the north of the country, officials said. A statement by the Nigerian Red Cross said 578 families (more than 2,000 people) displaced in the clashes had been registered. They were evacuated to camps for the displaced set up in the city by the Red Cross and the National Emergency Management Agency. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said it had established a full presence at the Police College camp site in the Ikeja district of the city to help women and children displaced by the clashes and by an earlier disaster - a fire and explosions at an ammunitions dump in Ikeja. "We are also looking into the possibility of setting up at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital where a number of displaced people have taken refuge," Batilloi Warritay, UNICEF spokesman in Nigeria, told IRIN. The clashes, which began on Saturday, lasted for about four days. They pitted Yorubas, who are indigenous to Lagos and other parts of southwestern Nigeria, against 'Hausas' (Hausa-speakers) from the north. [The language of the Hausa people - one of Nigeria's largest ethnic groups - is the lingua franca in the north. During clashes in the south northerners are generally referred to as Hausas even when they are not from that ethnic group.] In volatile Kano, northern Nigeria’s biggest city, troops and policemen patrolled the streets in anticipation of reprisals against Yoruba residents by members of the town's Hausa-speaking majority. "We do not want to take any chances, that’s why we have put men on the streets to check any outbreak of trouble," a senior police officer in the city told IRIN. Many people, fearing that attacks were likely after Friday's Muslim prayers, have taken refuge in police and military barracks in the city. Fears of reprisals heightened after the Arewa Consulative Forum (ACF), grouping influential northern leaders, issued a statement on Thursday accusing President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government of not doing enough to stop the violence in Lagos. According to the ACF, the government has not made any significant effort to enforce a ban issued last year on the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), a Yoruba militia accused of spearheading attacks on northerners in southwest Nigeria. "There is today an open recognition and acceptance of the OPC by governors in the southwest," ACF charged. "It is a matter of the gravest concern that the federal government has proved incapable or unwilling to provide protection to the northern communities that are consistent targets of OPC’s campaign of hatred." On Thursday, Obasanjo told top political leaders and security officials at a meeting in the capital, Abuja, that the unrest portended danger for Nigeria’s democracy. "Every occurrence of violence erodes the legitimacy of the state and the leaders, leaving democracy to stand alone and exposed to those who want to subvert it further or destroy it altogether," he said at the meeting, held to discuss the violence.