Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures - New York Times

Nigeria Counts 100 Deaths Over Danish Caricatures - New York Times: "The cycle of tit-for-tat sectarian violence has pushed the death toll in the last week well beyond 100, making Nigeria the hardest-hit country so far in the caricature controversy.

The main thoroughfare leading into the city across the Niger River was covered in bodies of Muslim Hausas who had tried to flee rampaging bands of youths, witnesses said. Many of the victims appeared to have been beaten to death; most of the bodies had been doused with gasoline and burned...

""What has become of us?" lamented the Rev. Joseph Ezeugo, pastor of Immaculate Heart Parish. "This cannot be Nigeria today. We have been living side by side with our Muslim brothers for so long. Why should a cartoon in Denmark bring us to civil war?"

But the cartoons, many political analysts say, were simply a pretext to act on very old grievances rubbed raw by political tensions. Nigeria is entering a period of great political uncertainty in which it must elect a new president to replace Olusegun Obasanjo, who is barred by term limits from running for re-election. Speculation has been rife that he may try to amend the Constitution to run again.

"At the end of the day it is all politics," said Kayode Fayemi, a political scientist and the director of the Center for Democracy and Development, an advocacy group in Nigeria. "Everything else is just pretext."