KANO, Nigeria — Police in northern Nigeria arrested and charged two radio journalists and a local cleric alleged to have sparked the killings of at least nine women gunned down while trying to administer polio vaccines, officials said Tuesday. Police claimed their on-air comments about a vaccination campaign in the area inflamed the region and caused the attacks.
The allegations against the journalists working for Wazobia FM reflect the continuing struggle over free speech in Nigeria, a nation that came out of military rule only in 1999 and where simply taking photographs on the street can get a person arrested. Though Nigeria has a rambunctious free press, threats and attacks against journalists remain common, and unsolved killings of reporters still haunt the country.
On Friday in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, gunmen in three-wheel taxis attacked women preparing to give the oral-drop vaccines to children, killing at least nine, police said. Witnesses later said they saw at least 12 dead from the attack.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, though suspicion immediately fell on the sect known as Boko Haram, which is waging a campaign of guerrilla shootings and bombings across northern Nigeria.
A few days before the killings, Wazobia FM aired a program in which presenters talked about how one of the station’s journalists had been attacked by local officials and had his equipment confiscated after coming upon a man who refused to allow his children to be vaccinated.
The journalists and the cleric on the program apparently discussed the fears people have about the vaccine, which then spread through the city.
Kano state police commissioner Ibrahim Idris ordered the journalists and the cleric be arrested immediately after Friday’s attack. Charges include conspiracy and inciting a disturbance.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 02/13/2013