Nigerian police have allegedly killed at least 20 people since last spring as part of the country’s enforcement of government-mandated coronavirus lockdowns, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on Monday.
“By Thursday, April 9, 2020, ten days after Nigeria entered a partial lockdown due to the COVID-19 [coronavirus] pandemic, Nigerian security officials had extrajudicially killed 13 people while enforcing the curfew – the virus had only claimed six lives by then,” Nigeria’s Premium Times reported on March 1.
“By May 4 [2020], when the government eased the lockdown, about 20 persons had been killed in similar circumstances,” according to the newspaper.
Northwestern Nigeria’s Kaduna State issued an ordinance on March 31, 2020, barring trade at local markets as part of an effort to curb transmission of the Chinese coronavirus. Residents in Kaduna State’s capital, Kaduna, defied the ordinance a few days later to hold an illegal marketplace. The unauthorized action prompted local authorities to crack down on traders, resulting in several deaths.
Residents of Kaduna’s Sabon Trikania community set up a makeshift grocery market at a local junction on the morning of April 4, 2020. Members of a state security group, the Kaduna South Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), arrived at the market a few hours after it opened “to disperse the buyers and sellers. They were resisted by the youth in the community,” according to the Premium Times.
The CJTF left the market in the face of the resistance but returned about one hour later accompanied by police officers from the local Kakuri Police Station.
“The assault started, shortly after midday, with the police shooting tear gas into the makeshift market but resistance from traders and residents did not work this time. The defiance was met with maximum force by the police officers who not only shot to disperse but hunted some residents down to their houses,” the newspaper alleged.
At least 11 people were wounded in the ensuing violence, according to the report. One injured person “died instantly, three survived for a few hours but died eventually. Six were critically injured with gunshot wounds, among them a 9-year-old boy.”
Kaduna police issued a statement shortly after the incident confirming that at least five people died during the crackdown on the illegal marketplace.
A Kaduna State police spokesman, Mohammed Jalige, told Nigeria’s Channels TV news site that “the traders, rather than return to their various homes after they were initially dispersed by the police, moved to Trikania to continue their business,” causing the police to respond with force.
Clashes sparked between traders and the CJTF after a local vigilante group joined in efforts to disperse the traders, who had “converged at a temporary market located at Trikania following the closure of [a] Monday market in [neighboring] Kakuri by police personnel,” according to Jalige. The spokesman added that Kaduna police had arrested seven people in connection with the incident.
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