Military President Ibrahim Babangida said Friday that Nigeria was facing a crisis, and he pledged firm action to protect people from violence that has rocked the country.
"There was a crisis and it remains a crisis," Gen. Babangida told reporters after an extraordinary meeting of his Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), the nation's top decisionmaking body, in the new capital Abuja.Babangida said the 20-member AFRC would defend "with the last drop of our blood" the integrity of his program to restore civilian rule to Africa's most populous nation.
Security forces were already on alert after disturbances in several cities heightened tension and raised concern about OPEC-member Nigeria's political and economic future.
"We will apply measures . . . to protect the citizens and their property," Babangida said. He said the AFRC would also use all available resources to resist what he called "all sources of instability."
Babangida gave no clear indication of how he planned to tackle Nigeria's worst unrest in a decade, but he was expected to address the issue in a nationwide television and radio address Monday evening.
Army and police patrolled the streets of the northern city of Kaduna, where residents said up to 300 people were killed in violence this week. Newspapers said 195 victims of ethnic and religious battles were buried in Kaduna on Thursday.
Newspapers said as many as five people were feared killed Thursday in central Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city, in the second day of fighting between market traders and touts trying to exploit tension to exploit money from shopkeepers.