Daily Times

ABUJA: Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s 100-day-long overseas medical trip is stoking tensions in the country, as calls grow for him to either return or resign.

Buhari, a northern Muslim, has been in London since May 7 to receive treatment for an undisclosed ailment, appointing Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, a southern Christian, to act on his behalf.

There have been series of rallies in Abuja since August 7 over the long absence of the 74-year-old retired general who led a military regime in the 1980s.

On Tuesday, singer and media personality Charles Oputa, known as “Charly Boy”, led a modest rally of around a dozen of his followers into the city’s sprawling Wuse market.

They were attacked by traders from the president’s own Hausa ethnic group, pelted with stones and chased out of the market — leaving behind Oputa’s BMW convertible in the chaos.

The clash highlighted the divisions plaguing the nation of 190 million, with many in the northern Hausa community fiercely protective of their president’s medical absence while many southern people like Oputa are openly critical of their absentee leader.

It also laid bare the fragile divide between the majority Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south that characterises Nigeria and underpins the country’s fractious politics.

The carefully orchestrated rotation of political power in Nigeria is seen as a balancing force between the north and the south.

Published in Daily Times, August 17^th 2017.