Libyan follies: Gaddafi says "Split Nigeria into two nations"

The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a speech to African student in Tripoli said Nigeria should be split into two nations; one Muslim and one Christian. "Nothing" else could "stop the bloodshed," Mr Gaddafi warned.

Excerpts from the Libyan leaders speech were published by the state-controlled news agency 'JANA' today. Mr Gaddafi was speaking to a "gathering of students, some of them from Nigeria," yesterday.

In the speech, he compared the current situation in Nigeria to that on the Indian sub-continent "before 1945, when massacres by Muslims and Hindus ended only after" the former British colony was split into Pakistan and India. The Libyan leader said, "though the solution was painful, it prevented the Hindus and Muslims in the sub-continent killing from one another."

He went on calling the current "apalling situation in Nigeria," which recently experienced yet another massacre, a product of the British colonisation. A federal republic had been "imposed on the country" by the British, "despite the resistance of the population," Mr Gaddafi was quoted as saying.

The conflict in Nigeria was too deeply rooted "to be treated with laws, police and courts," he went on. Accordingly, the Libyan leader warned that "nothing can stop the bloodshed and burning of houses of God, whether they be mosques or churches," except than the creation of seperrate Muslim and a Christian states.

The borders inherited by the colonisers have been declared sacro-saint by the African Union (AU), which fears the opening of a pandora's box if seperatists are allowed to draw new borders according to ethnic or religious lines. Several West African nations share the Muslim north and Christian south divide with Nigeria, including Cameroon, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

Colonel Gaddafi was the political leader of the African Union until 31 January, when Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika.