There is great tension in Kano over the possibility of another outbreak of religious violence in the city.
P.M.News learnt that a faceless Islamic group has been circulating leaflets since Monday calling adherents out for another round of anti-American demonstration.
They are asking people to assemble at Ado Bayero Prayer Ground today in solidarity with Afghanistan.
Indigenes and non-indigenes alike in the state have been gripped with fear over another round of blood-letting. Many residents in Kano have refused to go to work today and many traders too have refused to open their shops for fear of being attacked by the Islamic militants who wreaked havoc in the city last month, killing and burning houses.
But the state Police Commissioner, Yakubu Uba, has warned the demonstrators not to try anything like that. "The police would not hesitate to disperse such demonstrators by force if need be", he stated. He appealed to the fanatics to allow peace to reign.
About 200 people were killed in the city last month when symphatisers of the wanted Saudi fugitive, Osama bin Laden, accused of complicity in the September 11 suicide attacks on America, took to the streets chanting anti-American slogans. They looted and burnt properties of Christians and Southerners in the city.
Meanwhile, Igbos resident in the Northen states have been advised to use the Christmas and New Year periods to send their wives and children home to the East and escape the mass slaughter being planned by Islamic militants during the period.
The Oke Ndi Igbo Forum, the pan-Igbo socio-cultural group said it has learnt that Islamic militants sympathetic to the cause of Osama bin Laden are planning another round of bloodshed during the yuletide period.
Osama bin Laden is the Saudi fugitive residing in Afghanistan and wanted dead or alive by the United States which accuses him of masterminding the September 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington in which about 6000 people were killed.
Rising from a meeting, the Igbo group advised their kinsmen in the North to leave immediately before they are slaughtered like animals.
In a statement signed by Messrs. Oduocha Victor and Chukwuma Onyenkwu, President and Secretary, respectively on behalf of the forum, it stated that it has learnt that another religious riot is imminent in the area during the yuletide period.
Oke Ndi Igbo Forum also revealed that the Igbo nation lost over 500 people in the last religious clashes in Kano last month.
The forum also called on the Federal government to hold the Zamfara State Governor, Alhaji Ahmed Sani , responsible for the death of Igbos in Kano. The group argued that the religious interpretation given to the recent All Peoples party (APP) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) clashes in Zamfara gave the Islamic militants impetus to attack Christians in Kano.
The group also condemned the recent attack on Igbo traders at Tejuosho Market by area boys and called on the Lagos State government, the Surulere Local Government Council and the state police command to look into the matter and eradicate the phenomenon of area boys attacking traders. They further warned Igbos who plan to build an ultra modern N7 billion market at Abuja to consider the hostilities against Ndigbo and the issue of abandoned property policy before embarking on such a gigantic project.
The forum leaders said "we observed that the deliberate killing of Ndigbo and destruction of their properties has continued unabated since the program of 1966 through the genocide of the Civil War to the present jihad in Jos, Kano and Benue. We, therefore, callon Ndigbo to mobilize for self defence and reprisals since the federal government has failed to guarantee their safety.