|
 LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Police arrived before dawn Friday, smashing through a gate and breaking down apartment doors as they forced thousands of civil servants and their families from a recently privatized government complex.
It was just one in a series of mass evictions in Africa's most populous nation that Amnesty International has called a "human rights scandal."
The 1,004 Housing Estate, home to 8,000 people and sold to a company run by a former Nigerian army chief, is one of several government properties being privatized as part of a wider package of free market reforms. President Olusegun Obasanjo has pushed ahead with the reforms since he was re-elected in 2003, despite strong criticism because of mass layoffs of civil servants and the liberalization of gasoline prices, which has contributed to sharp price increases.
|