Police in Nigeria have estimated that over 162 people will be charged for the religious clashes which killed over 200 people at the beginning of the month.

Nigerian police have announced that an estimated 162 people will be charged for the riots that occurred in the central city of Jos/Nigeria at the beginning of the month where an estimated 200 people were horrifically murdered.

Some of the 162 people will be sentenced to death as the horrific clashes between Muslims and Christians led to children, women and the elderly to be slaughtered and burned.

A Nigerian police spokesman said “Forty-one of the suspects are to be charged with terrorism and culpable homicide” which are punishable by death

The attack by the members of the Muslim Hausa-Fulani ethnic group at the town of Dogo Nahauwa, south of Jos took place in the early hours of Sunday 7th March and was seen as a revenge attack for the killings of Muslims in January where at least 300 Muslims were massacred.

journalists and community leaders in Jos had told Human Rights Watch that there were many more bodies in sewage pits, wells and in bushes in the January attacks.

The recent attacks was the latest of unrest between the Muslim and Christian sides as dispute over farmlands between the Christians and Muslims have been on going since 2000.

At least 700 Nigerians were slaughtered in November 2008, when riots broke out following a local election.

Nigeria has also been under fire over the rioting between the two sides that divide the country in half. Human Rights groups and politicians have have said that the Nigerian authorities do not prosecute the leaders and main gang members who usually mastermind such tragic events in the country.

Nigeria’s judicial system is suffering greatly from the over crowded prisons and back log of cases that have caused many Nigerian’s to take the law into their own hands or take advantage of it.
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