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Mass Graves, State Terror on B-NLC: Troops Deployed as Police Killings Lead to Riots
in Kaduna
Soldiers and anti-riot policemen were,
yesterday, deployed in the Tudun Wada area of Kaduna following a stampede triggered by a report that 17 people
arrested during last week�s nationwide strike had been shot in police custody and given a mass burial. The police
in a swift reaction to the report dismissed it as untrue, while Governor Ahmed Makarfi in a radio and television
broadcast instituted a seven-man probe panel into the allegation. The stampede started at Tudun Wada area of Kaduna
metropolis at about 9a.m when some youths alleged that they saw people in police uniform burying corpses in the
Muslim cemetery. The youths claimed to have identified some of the dead bodies to be their relations and went on
the rampage. Within minutes, the Kaduna Central market was closed while shops and stores were hurriedly locked
up by their owners as people ran helter-skelter for their lives. Other sources said the police killed robbery suspects
and buried the corpses at the Muslim cemetery and youths noticed it and started destroying property. However, there
had been an uneasy calm at Tudun Wada area since October 11, 2004 when the police killed a 12-year-old secondary
school student, Muhammadu Sani Idris, for allegedly taking part in the four-day nationwide strike organised by
a coalition of civil society groups and the BiafraNigeria Labour Congress (B-NLC). Late Sani Idris was said to
have left school early on the fateful day to attend the naming ceremony of his younger brother when the police
bullets felled him. The Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Assistant Superintendent Saad Yahaya, denying...
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 The Presidency yesterday stated that President Olusegun
Obasanjo is yet to formally receive a letter from Professor Chinua Achebe rejecting the national honour of the
Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR)...
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 President
of the BiafraNigeria Labour Congress (B-NLC) says his decision to serve on the presidential committee set up to
proffer palliatives to the effects of the latest hike in the prices of petroleum products was informed...
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