A suspected member of an Islamist sect that launched an uprising last year tried to shoot a local traditional leader at his house at the weekend in northern Nigeria, the military said on Monday.
Military spokesman Lieutenant Abubakar Abdullahi said the local chief in the city of Maiduguri managed to wrestle the assailant, who was armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, and overpower him before he was able to open fire Sunday night.
“We made an arrest of a man in his early 30s …in connection with the foiled attack on a local chief here in the city,” Abdullahi told AFP.
“We believe he is one of the attackers from Boko Haram that have been terrorising the city in recent months.”
Authorities have blamed a series of recent attacks in northern Nigeria on an Islamist sect known as Boko Haram, which launched an uprising last year crushed by a brutal military and police assault.
Recent incidents have included attacks on police stations, a prison raid and shootings of police officers by motorcycle-riding gunmen.
Much of the violence has occurred in Borno state, whose capital Maiduguri was the centre of last year’s uprising. Troops have been deployed in the area in response.