Nigeria: One Clash Too Many

9 January 2007
editorial

Lagos — Clashes between military and paramilitary sections of the Nigerian society have become embarrassingly too frequent. It is either the army is fighting with the police or the Navy is fighting with the army. Whichever is the case, it invariably leaves a trail of blood and death.

The latest case involved men of the Navy and Prison warders. In Lagos where the clash took place, both groups are neighbours, given that the Naval base in Satellite Town shares a common boundary with the Kirikiri prisons. According to media reports, a Naval staff had driven into the Kirikiri prison premises, since there is a thorough fare linking both communities, and parked in an unauthorized place. A prison warder on duty directed him to park properly. But this was resisted by the Naval man. In the altercations that followed, fisticuffs were exchanged. In a needless show of combat superiority, the Naval man raced back to his Naval Base, and mobilized his colleagues to launch a reprisal attack on the warders. In the course of this shameful duel, two innocent persons who were neither of the Navy nor Prison staff, were killed.

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