By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Sep 20 1996 (IPS)

Security has been tightened in the northern Nigerian town of Kaduna, where police and soldiers clashed with followers of a detained Shi’ite Muslim cleric two days ago.

A resident of Kaduna told IPS by telephone on Friday that joint military and police patrols had been driving continually through the city’s main streets to prevent the Shi’ites from regrouping after been dispersed by the security men on Wednesday.

The source said all routes leading into the town were being guarded by well armed soldiers and policemen.

He added that while Muslims usually converged on Kaduna’s central mosque on Fridays — the Muslim day of worship — this Friday the city’s residents had deserted the streets, fearing that members of the Shi’ite group might infiltrate the mosque and cause chaos.

According to police sources, seven people — five members of the sect, a police inspector and a soldier — died on Wednesday during the clashes between the security forces and demonstrators calling for the release of their 34-year-old leader Yaqub El Zak- Zaky, and three other Shi’ites, who were arrested last week.

Other sources said scores were killed when police and soldiers backed by air force helicopters used tears to disperse the nearly 2,000 demonstrators, mainly young men and women, some with babies strapped to their backs.

When, last week, the Shi’ites had given the authorities in Kaduna state one week to release their leader, the police high command there placed the state on security alert, but they appeared to have been caught by surprise since the protest occurred on Wednesday, whereas they had expected trouble on Thursday.

The demonstrators descended on the city after gathering in their stronghold in the town of Zaria, north of Kaduna. Some reportedly came from other northern states. They marched through the streets of the town bearing placards, shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Great’, singing war chants and demanding the release of their leader.

The protesters distributed handbills that read “Ina Mallam Yaqub El Zak-Zaky?”, which means ‘where is mallam Yaqub El Zak- Zaky?’ in Hausa, the most widely spoken language in Northern Nigeria.

Police Commissioner Yakubu Shuaibu who had threatened to “break the necks” of any people bent on “flouting the ban on public gatherings and demonstrations” confirmed that 14 people were arrested during the protest.

This week’s protest came just days after violent clashes between Shi’ites and security forces in Zaria, an ancient city and a centre of Islamic learning. Independent sources said 20 people died in the Sep. 13 disturbances in Zaria, but the police denied this. “As far as I am concerned there were no deaths in Zaria as claimed by the Shi’ites,” Shuaibu said.

He said Zak-Zaky and his three followers had been arrested “for security reasons” and denied that their detention was linked to clashes earlier this month between Shi’ites and Sunnis in the town of Kafanchan, south of Zaria.

Since Wednesday’s unrest, some Nigerians have been calling on the government to do something to defuse the situation before it degenerates into a total crisis.

“The government should try and dialogue not in terms of appeasement but for them to understand the reason why their leaders were arrested and detained,” said Abdullahi Mahdi, Director of the Arewa House Centre for Research and Historical Documentation at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria.

Mahdi, a historian and specialist in Islamic studies, said the Shi’ites did not believe in secular authority and urged the government to let them know that there was a head of state who should be respected.

Shi’ites groups have been posing an increasingly strong challenge to the religious and political establishment in Northern Nigeria in recent months.

As in the south, the political authorities in the north, which is home to the bulk of the estimated 40 million Muslims in Nigeria (out of a total population of 100 million) are mainly military. However, the traditional rulers, and the majority of the Muslim population are Sunnis.

A Sunni cleric who requested anonymity accused the Shi’ites of intolerance. “The Shi’ites insist that there is no freedom of worship,” he told IPS. “Anyone who is not a Muslim is an unbeliever, a sinner who must be converted by force or punished.”

However, what appears evident is that the Shi’ites groups have been gaining converts among disenchanted youths in the north and there have been many clashes there between them and the Sunnis since mid-year.

In June, 10 people died during a disturbance in Kaduna. When, in July, a Kaduna court ordered that five men charged in connection with the previous month’s unrest be remanded into police custody, other Shi’ites freed them from the courtroom.

On Aug, 5, one person died and two others were seriously injured when Shi’ites and Sunnis clashed in another northern city, Katsina.

On Aug. 11, two persons were killed, many others injured and several houses burnt in the Kano, southeast of Katsina, in unrest that broke out when Sunnis tried to prevent a group of Shi’ites from holding a rally in a neighbourhood there.

Zak-Zaky, a graduate of economics from Ahmadu Bello University, is the best known of the Shi’ite leaders in Nigeria. He started attracting followers while still at university in the mid- to late 1970s.

He said in an interview earlier this year that the 1979 revolution in Iran marked a turning point for him. “The eruption in Iran put into practice those ideals which we hold dear,” he said. “The future we are looking for, we saw it happening somewhere. At least, it gave us the courage that that goal was realisable.”

His movement’s ideology, he said, required that “our belief should come first, then our nation second and maybe family later on…” Its goal, he explained, was for Nigeria to become a “wholly Islamic” nation, one which “considers Allah as the Lord of the nation and his message the ceiling of all laws.”

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