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President Goodluck Jonathan |
The Boko Haram sect, which says it wants a wider application of sharia Islamic law across Africa’s most populous nation, has claimed responsibility for the killings of police officers and attacks on churches and drinking places in recent months.
Three people were killed and two soldiers injured by a blast yesterday in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state and the focus of recent attacks, the operations officer of a joint military task force (JTF) said.
“The blast occurred when a patrol team of the JTF was attacked on Tuesday morning ... (we) blame Boko Haram for planting improvised explosive devices in residential areas,” Colonel Victor Ebhaleme said.
Most of the attacks have been around Maiduguri, a city in one of the poorest regions in Nigeria, close to borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad. More than 150 people have been killed this year in the city of more than 1.2mn people.
The army said 11 members of Boko Haram were killed and two soldiers wounded on Saturday night as the military stepped up efforts to curb the violence.
Thousands boarded trucks to exit the city, witnesses said. “We are going to Kano where my late husband who was killed by soldiers last Saturday comes from,” Aishatu Musa, a woman with five children, said.
Last week authorities in Maiduguri banned motorcycles, which have been used for bombings and shootings. But the motorbikes are an important means of transport for local traders who play a key role in the local economy.
The University of Maiduguri was closed on Monday.
“After an emergency meeting of the university senate, it was decided that lectures be suspended in view of the prevailing security situation until further notice,” a university statement said. “All students have been directed to vacate hostels.”
Bomb blasts in the north have replaced militant attacks on oil facilities hundreds of kilometres away in the southern Niger Delta as the main security threat in Nigeria. The US and European Union have condemned the violence.
President Goodluck Jonathan, sworn in for his first full term in late May, has voiced support for dialogue, but the Boko Haram group has said it will negotiate only if demands including the resignation of the Borno state government are met.
Boko Haram strikes have spread farther afield in recent months, including a bomb in the car park of national police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, last month.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan named career diplomat Olugbenga Ashiru as foreign minister and respected engineer Bart Nnaji as power minister among several Cabinet appointments late on Monday.
Ashiru has served as a diplomat for almost three decades and was recently Nigeria’s high commissioner in South Africa. Nnaji was the head of a company that built a major power distribution plant in a country suffering from chronic electricity shortages.
Nnaji, former head of the presidential power task force, will arguably have one of the toughest ministerial challenges.
Nigeria has a population of more than 140mn and has the world’s seventh-largest natural gas reserves, but mismanagement, low investment and a lack of maintenance at power stations deprive many people of any electricity.
Governments have promised for decades to fix the problem, but powerful vested interests, including officials controlling contracts, powerful unions and billionaire tycoons who import diesel and generators, have held back progress.
Jonathan was sworn in for his first full term on May 29 and his ministerial choices are being watched closely by Nigerians and foreign investors keen for a team capable of driving reforms.
He has already reappointed 12 ministers from the outgoing government to their old jobs, including Oil Minister Deziani Alison-Madueke, a move his critics saw as an uninspiring start.
World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was approved by Nigeria’s Senate to join the Cabinet last week and is expected to be sworn in by Jonathan in an expanded role as finance minister in the coming days.
Okonjo-Iweala, a respected former finance minister who helped negotiate debt relief in 2005, said last week she was concerned about the high cost of government and the depletion of foreign reserves, despite high oil prices.