By Valentine Amanze, Online Editor
President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria has appealed for calm following reports of intercommunal violence between ethnic groups at a market in Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria at the weekend.
Buhari made the appeal on Twitter to religious and traditional leaders, as well as elected leaders.
He urged them “to join hands with the federal government to ensure that communities in their domain are not splintered along ethnic and other primordial lines.
“We will not allow any ethnic or religious groups to stoke up hatred and violence against other groups.”
Oyo state police did not immediately respond to calls requesting comment.
“The attacks, which led to the loss of lives and properties, must be investigated and perpetrators brought to justice,” rights group, Amnesty International, had stated, referring to the violence at Shasha market.
Clashes between traders from the Yoruba and Hausa ethnic groups broke out on Saturday at Shasha market in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, the state governor’s spokesman said.
Tensions have increased in Southwestern states in recent weeks amid claims by public figures that nomadic cattle herders from the mainly northern Fulani ethnic group are carrying out violent crimes including kidnapping, rape and destruction of crops with their cattle.
Many of the herders have moved South in search of dwindling grazing land.
Usman Yako, the chairman of the Hausa Traders Association at Shasha market, told Reuters that at least 11 people from his ethnic group were killed in clashes at the market on Friday and Saturday that followed an argument between Yoruba and Hausa traders.
Nigeria’s security forces are already stretched by armed gangs of kidnappers in the northwest and an Islamist militant insurgency in the northeast.
