LAGOS -- A week after a munitions store blast left more than 1,000 dead in Nigeria's main city, and shaken by repeated outbursts of violence, President Olusegun Obasanjo is under growing pressure to right some of the country's many ills, AFP reported.

Obasanjo, 65 next month, is expected to announce in May that he will seek reelection next year.

But while support for democracy in Nigeria remains strong at 71 percent, according to a recent Afrobarometer survey produced by U.S. and Nigerian academics, support for Obasanjo is down from his election in 1999.

Since Monday, the crusty former soldier, whose behavior has often been said to be erratic, has come under heavy public criticism for what has been seen as his insensitive handling of the Lagos explosion.

Most particularly he has been criticized after he told a group of protesting soldiers' wives to "shut up" and failed to visit to express sympathy with the victims.

On Thursday, angry soldiers pelted Obasanjo's Deputy, Atiku Abubakar, with water bottles in an open display of anger with the government over the blasts.

On Friday, junior police officers in a third of the 36 states of Nigeria went on strike for payment of salary arrears and overdue promotions.

The strike ended quickly after the government promised to release hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay, but it rattled the government.

On Saturday, ethnic fighting erupted in a district of Lagos and left at least 21 dead.

The violence was unrelated to the munitions blasts, but, with international attention focused on Nigeria, again highlighted the fragility of Africa's most populous country where more than 10,000 have died since the ending of military rule in 1999.

Such clashes, in the context of which Saturday's violence appeared relatively minor, have nevertheless so far failed to bring about the often predicted collapse of Nigeria.