The U.S. warned of a threatened attack against hotels in Nigeria, after a bombing yesterday in the capital, Abuja, killed at least 19 people.
The U.S. consulate in Lagos cited indications that “groups associated with terrorism” planned an attack against one or both of two Sheraton hotels in the West African country’s commercial hub. It said on its website that it didn’t have further information, and warned U.S. citizens to avoid the hotels.
Yesterday’s explosion in Abuja, the second there in less than a month, also wounded 60 people, Ishaya Isah Chonoko, the National Emergency Management Agency’s coordinator for Abuja, said today by phone. Three undetonated improvised explosive devices were recovered from the blast site and deactivated, police spokesman Frank Mba told reporters.
The blast struck the same Nyanya district that was hit by a car bomb on April 14 which killed at least 75 people and was claimed by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group. The attacks appeared to signal Boko Haram’s intent to press its war, until now largely confined to the northeast, into the capital, which is due to host the World Economic Forum on Africa next week.
“It creates an atmosphere of fear within the capital which means that it’s no longer now confined to one region of the country,” Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Abuja-based Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, said by phone. “It’s now a big national problem.”
Boko Haram, which means “western education is a sin” in the Hausa language, has been waging a violent campaign for the past five years to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, in Africa’s biggest economy.
WEF Plans
Gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram seized at least 276 girls from a secondary school in northeastern Borno state last month, and 223 are still missing, Asabe Kwambura, their principal, said today by phone from Chibok town, the school’s location.
Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama and Rwandan President Paul Kagame are expected to attend the WEF meeting being held May 7 to May 9.
While there is no change in plans for the event, security in Abuja has been tightened, including expanded “secure zone perimeters,” Elsie Kanza, WEF’s head of Africa, said today in an e-mailed statement. “These highly visible additional measures are purely precautionary.”
Jonathan’s press spokesman, Reuben Abati, didn’t answer calls seeking comment.
Christmas Bombing
“The timing of the attack, a few days before the World Economic Forum is scheduled to start, is likely to maximize its political impact,” Thomas Hansen, senior Africa analyst at Control Risks in London, said in e-mailed response to questions. “This is despite the perpetrator not appearing to break the security cordon around Abuja or displaying increased capabilities.”
The last surge of attacks near Abuja occurred in 2011 when an explosion at a church on Christmas Day that year killed at least 43 people. Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb that left more than 23 people dead at the United Nations building in the capital that same year.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with about 170 million people and its biggest oil producer, is almost evenly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
Nigeria’s military has sought to contain the violence in the northeast of the country, with Jonathan declaring a state of emergency in three states in the region. The violence there has claimed more than 4,000 lives and forced almost half a million people to flee their homes, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
Bloomberg
