Religious violence rocks Nigeria

The arrival of dozens of beauty queens in London Sunday closed the troubled Nigerian chapter on this year's Miss World contest.

For the contestants, the change in venue means a return to simply vying for the title of the globe's most beautiful woman. But they leave in their wake a Nigeria gripped by increasing social and political tensions that find expression between religious and ethnic groups.

Violence that started last week in response to the contest, and continued into the weekend, left as many as 200 people dead. Earlier riots have also taken place unhindered by civil authority, and the government seems to hold little sway in large parts of the north, where Islamic law has governed for the past two years.

For a country that has tried to portray itself as emerging successfully from 16 years of military rule, the recent violence is the latest indication that it has miles to go in achieving that goal.

The challenge for the government and the international community, analysts say, is to resolve some of the seemingly intractable problems that make Africa's most populous country appear to the world as if it is falling apart.

"The image of Nigeria is poor and this will make it worse," says one state government official in Lagos, the country's commercial capital. "We must address the question of our [internal] relationships."

The Nigerian newspaper that lit the fuse last week has tried to take some first steps. ThisDay cleared one-third of its front page and all of page two Sunday to run an apology to the nation's Muslims over an article that suggested the prophet Muhammad might have married one of the contestants in the Miss World beauty pageant. The mea culpa said the newspaper's ethos was "not to be offensive to any religion" nor "to denigrate the cultural and religious values" of the country's people. "We can only plead that we meant no harm," ThisDay said. "The error was totally unintended."

The length and scope of the apology - the fifth made by ThisDay on its front page in the last week - highlights the continued fragility of the country's political system and social life three years after the return of civilian rule. But ThisDay's response had little effect on the rioting.

Local residents say the trouble began in the northern city of Kaduna on Wednesday, when a mob burned down ThisDay's office in the city, and attacks on churches triggered reprisals from the area's large Christian population.

"It was terrible," says Shehu Sani, president of Civil Rights Congress, a Kaduna-based nongovernmental organization. "There was burning and looting everywhere."

The demonstrations came in apparent response to a Nov. 16 ThisDay article about the Miss World contest, which began earlier this month and was to conclude on Dec. 7 in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. The article, written by Isioma Daniel, a style reporter who has since resigned, questioned the sincerity of Muslim groups who had attacked the pageant as indecent.

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