Six separatists killed in Nigerian census clash
LAGOS, March 22 (Reuters) - Six members of a Nigerian separatist group were killed in a clash with police in southeastern Anambra state after they tried to stop people from being counted in a census, police said on Wednesday.
Members of the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) attacked a police station in the town of Nnewi on Tuesday, the first day of the census in Africa's most populous country, police said.
"Six MASSOB members were killed. They attacked a police station and tried to burn it," Anambra state Police Commissioner Moses Anegbode told Reuters by telephone from the state capital Awka.
He said five vehicles were torched during the clash and 15 MASSOB activists arrested.
On Tuesday, initial eyewitness reports from Nnewi had said two people were killed.
MASSOB campaigns for the southeast of Nigeria, a region dominated by the Ibo tribe, to become an independent state under the name Biafra. Some MASSOB members argue that Ibo should not be counted in the Nigerian census because they are Biafrans.
The Ibo are the third biggest ethnic group in Nigeria.
The Nnewi violence was the most serious incident linked to the census. Headcounts are fraught in Nigeria because rival ethnic and religious groups have tried to use them to assert their numerical superiority and claim a larger share of oil revenues and political representation.
Five people were killed in southwestern Ondo state at the weekend in fighting linked to the census between two ethnic groups over ownership of a village.
Elsewhere, the census was hampered mostly by logistical problems. Counting did not start on time in many parts of the country because census takers said they had not been paid. The census runs until Saturday.
The Nnewi violence was apparently an isolated incident.
MASSOB plays on nationalist Ibo sentiments that sparked a civil war in 1967 when the southeast tried to set up an independent Biafran Republic.
The group is particularly popular with Ibo youths who did not experience the three-year war in which over a million people died, mostly of hunger.
The government argues that membership of MASSOB amounts to treason because it implies waging war on the Nigerian state.
Hundreds of activists have been arrested since MASSOB was formed six years ago, and the group's leader and several members are on trial for treason.
Members of the Movement for the Actualisation of a Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) attacked a police station in the town of Nnewi on Tuesday, the first day of the census in Africa's most populous country, police said.
"Six MASSOB members were killed. They attacked a police station and tried to burn it," Anambra state Police Commissioner Moses Anegbode told Reuters by telephone from the state capital Awka.
He said five vehicles were torched during the clash and 15 MASSOB activists arrested.
On Tuesday, initial eyewitness reports from Nnewi had said two people were killed.
MASSOB campaigns for the southeast of Nigeria, a region dominated by the Ibo tribe, to become an independent state under the name Biafra. Some MASSOB members argue that Ibo should not be counted in the Nigerian census because they are Biafrans.
The Ibo are the third biggest ethnic group in Nigeria.
The Nnewi violence was the most serious incident linked to the census. Headcounts are fraught in Nigeria because rival ethnic and religious groups have tried to use them to assert their numerical superiority and claim a larger share of oil revenues and political representation.
Five people were killed in southwestern Ondo state at the weekend in fighting linked to the census between two ethnic groups over ownership of a village.
Elsewhere, the census was hampered mostly by logistical problems. Counting did not start on time in many parts of the country because census takers said they had not been paid. The census runs until Saturday.
The Nnewi violence was apparently an isolated incident.
MASSOB plays on nationalist Ibo sentiments that sparked a civil war in 1967 when the southeast tried to set up an independent Biafran Republic.
The group is particularly popular with Ibo youths who did not experience the three-year war in which over a million people died, mostly of hunger.
The government argues that membership of MASSOB amounts to treason because it implies waging war on the Nigerian state.
Hundreds of activists have been arrested since MASSOB was formed six years ago, and the group's leader and several members are on trial for treason.
posted by Marko at 3/22/2006 06:53:00 AM
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