Fearing trouble, Lagos police ban forum on Islamic law

LAGOS, Nigeria (Reuters) -- Police in Nigeria's biggest city of Lagos said on Sunday they had banned a meeting of prominent Nigerians to try to defuse Christian-Muslim tension, citing the risk of violence in the teeming metropolis.

Lagos State Police Commissioner Mike Okiro told Reuters he had communicated his force's concerns to the organizers of the September 4-6 meeting to discuss a national crisis over the proclamation of Islamic Shariah law in northern Nigeria.

"Lagos is a multi-religious city and the mere discussion of Shariah here could generate controversy and trouble," Okiro said.

Veteran Lagos lawyer Rotimi Williams of the so-called Committee of Concerned Citizens, including both Muslims and Christians, which is mediating the Shariah crisis, criticized the police action.

He described the police action as a dereliction of its duty to protect the constitutional right of Nigerians to assemble freely to discuss important national issues.

Hundreds of people died in two bouts of bloodletting in the cosmopolitan northern city Kaduna earlier this year as Christians and Muslims clashed over plans to proclaim Shariah in Kaduna state.

The Kaduna riots triggered revenge killings of northern Muslims in southeastern Nigeria, stoking ethnic and religious tension in much of the multi-ethnic country of over 110 million people.

About half a dozen of the 19 states of the predominantly Islamic north have either adopted Shariah law or are in the process of doing so.

Non-Muslims oppose Shariah penal code because of its stringent sanctions, such as stoning for adultery and amputation of hands for theft. Critics also say it violate Nigeria's constitutional status as a secular state.

Oil-producing states in southern Nigeria have initiated moves to wrest control of oil resources from the central government, citing the latter's inability to stem the spread of Shariah.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has described the Shariah crisis as Nigeria's worst since its 1960s civil war over breakaway Biafra. But while advocating dialogue to resolve the explosive issue, Obasanjo has yet to initiate any formal talks.

In a paid newspaper notice on Sunday, Williams told members of the committee that the meeting had been called off following his discussion with the police chief.

Okiro said: "Police can offer protection within limits. If 10,000 people come to disrupt that meeting what can police do? I won't wait until thousands of people besiege the hotel before I take action."

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