Nigerian leader says bloodshed endangers reform

ABUJA, Nigeria -- Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo warned on Thursday that persistent bloodshed threatens the survival of democracy -- less than three years after the end of military rule in Africa's most populous nation.

Obsanjo's comments about his country were made to legislators, and to visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair later spoke to a rare joint session of Nigeria's upper and lower houses of parliament about the ways in which violence and poverty in Africa are intertwined with global economic health and security.

In unusually emphatic comments, Obasanjo said recent ethnic clashes in the commercial capital, Lagos, were "senseless and absolutely unacceptable." Nearly 100 people were killed in two days of street fighting, and thousands more fled their homes.

"We appear to be steadily losing ground to the suffocating influences of violence and lawlessness in the conduct of our political affairs," Obasanjo told legislators at a seminar before his talks with Blair. He said the violence threatens "the survival of the democratic system ... and our unity and oneness."