Share & more
Violent clashes have taken place between the police and local communities following a dispute over a road building project in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta, according to news reports on Tuesday.
The police said they were attempting to restore order after fighting broke out between local gangs in the village of K'dere in a dispute over a firm of contractors attempting to implement a road project without local consent, the BBC reported. But a spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, or MOSOP, founded by the late environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, denied that any such incident took place and
accused the police of widespread brutality, AFP reported.
"Our information is that at least 10 people have been shot and that at least 80 houses have been burnt down in K'dere," AFP reported a MOSOP spokesman as saying.
This incident marks the first serious confrontations in Ogoniland since the end of military rule in Nigeria, the BBC reported. MOSOP, which fights for political freedom and against environmental degradation, achieved worldwide prominence in 1995 when Saro-Wiwa was executed in General Sani
Abacha's regime.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions