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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

NIGERIA: 25 die in political clashes in Warri

LAGOS, 14 May 2003 (IRIN) - At least 25 people have been killed in a fresh outbreak of political violence in the volatile southern oil town of Warri, residents and officials said on Wednesday.

Residents said violence between supporters of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the rival Alliance for Democracy (AD) broke out on Monday in the Effurun district of Warri and continued on Tuesday. Several buildings were burned down.

"More than 25 people have been killed and some houses are still burning," Thompson Mukoro, a resident,in Warri, the capital of Nigeria's Delta state, told IRIN.

Residents said heavily armed contingents of soldiers in armoured personnel carriers and riot police had managed to restore some control by Wednesday.

The immediate cause of the latest outbreak of violence was unclear. The PDP and AD blamed each other for sparking off the fighting.

Samuel Eshenakhe, an AD official in Warri, said armed thugs from President Olusegun Obasanjo's PDP had launched premeditated attacks on known opposition leaders. "My brother's house was burnt and there has been a lot of destruction by the PDP boys," Eshenakhe told IRIN.

However, Abel Oshevire, spokesman for James Ibori, the PDP governor of Delta State, accused "AD youths," bitter at losing last month's governorship elections, of fomenting the trouble. "PDP as winners have no reason to cause violence, but being human beings there's no way our members will fold their hands to be clubbed to death," he said.

In the past four years Warri has been racked by political and ethnic violence in which hundreds of people have been killed. Rival ethnic groups in the area frequently fight each other for control of different parts of the town. Their aim is usually to demand benefits such as jobs and amenities from multi-national oil companies operating in the area.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict, (IRIN) Economy

[ENDS]

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