LAGOS: Nigerian soldiers blocked roads, fired shots into the air and burned several buses in Lagos yesterday after a soldier was killed in a bus accident, an episode residents said recalled the country’s former military dictatorship.
Nigeria has been a democracy since shortly after the death of military ruler Sani Abacha in 1998, but rights groups say abuses and indiscipline by its troops remain a problem, especially in the remote northeast, where an Islamist insurgency threatens stability across Africa’s largest economy and top oil producer.
“The rampaging soldiers already burnt five ... buses,” Femi Oke-Osanyitolu, Director General of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for Lagos state, told Reuters by telephone, calling it “barbaric and uncivilised.”
There were no deaths or injuries in the incident, he said.
The soldiers, he said, were reacting to the killing of one of their number who was hit by a bus while riding a motorcycle.
Nigerian bus drivers have a reputation for reckless driving, although it was not clear whose fault the accident was.
“The governor of the state is currently talking with the superior officers of the army to restore order within the area,” around Ikorodu Road, on the sprawling Lagos mainland, Oke-Osanyitoluhe said.
The defence spokesman did not immediately comment on the soldiers’ behaviour. Disturbances continued for several hours from the morning into the afternoon.
Local TV stations broadcast pictures of the buses up
in flames.
REUTERS
