Muslim leaders call for peace

Muslim leaders from 19 northern Nigerian states called on their people on Monday to live in peace with Christians, following recent violence between followers of the two religions in which hundreds of people were killed, news organisations reported.

“We pray to God the Almighty to give us the fortitude to bear the losses and the courage and determination to live together and develop our country to greater heights,” they said in a communique.

In the document, whose content was released after separate meetings in Abuja with Nigeria’s president and vice president, the leaders pledged to uphold the country’s unity. They called on Muslims in the south of the country to remain there and for all communities in the Muslim dominated north to live in harmony.

However the communique, read by the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Maccido, made no mention of an earlier announcement by Vice President Atiku Abubakar that governors in the north had agreed to suspend the implementation of Sharia laws.

Close to 1,000 Muslims and Christians died in the last two weeks, in what has been described as the worst violence since a civil war in 1967-1970. The killings followed a demonstration by Christians in Kaduna against the implementation of Sharia law in the city which is almost equally populated by adherents of both faiths.

The Muslim Association of Nigeria also called on both communities to show restraint over the Sharia issue. Christians fear that Sharia’s harsh criminal code - which calls for limb amputations for some crimes - may be applied on them. However, Muslim governors have said repeatedly that the laws apply only to Muslims.

Meanwhile, Governor Orji Uzor-Kalu of Abia State, where hundreds of northern Muslims died in retaliatory killings by members of the local Igbo community, warned that if any more Igbos were killed in the north, more violence would follow.

“Nobody should kill an Igbo man again in the name of religion,” AFP reported him as saying. “There will be retaliation.”

State officials said some 10,000 people fled their homes following the killings in Abia, with 7,500 seeking refuge in a naval base, AFP reported.