* Amnesty says 12 protesters killed in Lagos on Tuesday
* President did not refer to protest shooting in speech
* Buhari is a former military ruler voted into office in
2015
(Adds remarks by Buhari, reaction to his comments, details on
unrest in Lagos)
By Felix Onuah, Libby George and Alexis Akwagyiram
ABUJA/LAGOS, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu
Buhari on Thursday called for an end to street protests in the
country, as authorities in the commercial capital Lagos
struggled to enforce a curfew imposed to contain anger over a
crackdown on anti-police protesters.
Gunshots rang out and smoke rose from at least two fires in
the affluent Ikoyi neighbourhood on Thursday, witnesses said. A
fire broke out in the district's prison, the state government
said. Video footage showed a blaze in a shopping mall in another
part of Lagos.
The unrest has become a political crisis for Buhari, a
former military leader who came to power at the ballot box in
2015 and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Some
protesters have said they feared a return to the dark days of
military rule.
Violence in Lagos, Africa's biggest city and the commercial
hub of the continent's largest economy, has escalated since
Wednesday. Groups of young men and armed police clashed in some
neighbourhoods following a shooting on Tuesday night in Lekki
district.
Rights group Amnesty International said soldiers and police
killed at least 12 protesters in Lekki and Alausa, another Lagos
district. On Thursday the human rights group called for an
"immediate and thorough investigation of allegations of unlawful
killing and use of excessive force against protestors in Lagos
on the evening of Tuesday 20 Oct. 2020."
The army has denied soldiers were at the site of the
shooting, where people had gathered in defiance of the curfew.
Buhari urged youths to "discontinue the street protests and
constructively engage government in finding solutions" in a
televised address to the nation that marked his first public
statement since the shootings.
But the president made no direct reference to the shootings,
prompting criticism on social media.
Reflecting widespread surprise at the omission, ex-lawmaker
Shehu Sani https://twitter.com/ShehuSani/status/1319349361126539266?s=20,
a former member of Buhari's party, tweeted: "You ask for
speech, you got the speech and now you are speechless."
Entrepreneur Adam Bradford https://twitter.com/Entre_Adam/status/1319342890863218693?s=20,
also on Twitter, wrote: "Is Buhari's memory so short that he
forgot about the Lekki shooting?"
The protests against police brutality, which involved
nationwide marches for nearly two weeks until the Tuesday
shootings, were largely peaceful.
But some people committed vandalism and other criminal acts
on the sidelines of the demonstrations, and both the authorities
and protesters said they were not demonstrators. Buhari
acknowledged this by referring to those who had "hijacked and
misdirected" the peaceful protests.
The shooting of protesters has prompted a wave of criticism
of Nigerian authorities and the behaviour of its security
forces.
The UN Human Rights chief said there was "little doubt that
this was a case of excessive use of force", while United States
presidential candidate Joe Biden and former U.S. secretary of
state Hillary Clinton both condemned the use of violence on the
protesters. A delegation of U.S. officials who were in Nigeria for
previously scheduled meetings met the country's vice president
on Thursday and condemned the "use of excessive force by
military forces who fired on unarmed demonstrators in Lagos," a
department of state spokeswoman said.
Buhari, in his address, encouraged the international
community to "know all facts available" before rushing to
judgment.
UNREST
Much of the unrest in Lagos in recent days has been
concentrated in the mainland areas of the lagoon city, where
young men have set up makeshift barricades to block roads. But
the trouble spread to a wealthier part of the city on Thursday
when a fire broke out at a prison in the upmarket suburb of
Ikoyi.
Polly Alakija, an artist, said she saw men armed with
machetes walking in a street near the prison, as smoke billowed
from the building, while soldiers fired guns. She said the
gunfire lasted for about two hours, ending at around 1 p.m.
(1200 GMT).
A Lagos state spokesman later said the fire at Ikoyi prison
was under control and armed officers were at the scene. He did
not say how it started or comment on the reports of gunfire.
Video footage posted online and on local media showed a fire
at the Circle shopping mall on the Lekki-Epe Expressway.
Several states in southern Nigeria have imposed curfews
after two weeks of confrontations across the country between
security services and protesters against police brutality - the
West African nation's biggest wave of unrest since the end of
military rule in 1999.
Oil-producing Delta state on Thursday said it would start a
48-hour curfew on Thursday.
Hours before Buhari's speech, National Security Adviser
Babagana Monguno, speaking to reporters in the capital Abuja
after a meeting with the head of state, said the president had
directed all security agencies to operate within "the confines
of legality" and "not to do anything that will aggravate the
situation".
The security adviser said Buhari was very concerned about
the unrest in much of the country and did not want a situation
in which there was "anarchy."