An explosion near a police convoy in northern Nigeria on Friday is the latest in a surge of attacks that officials attributed to an Islamic militant group that appears to be gaining in strength despite a government crackdown.
An improvised explosive device went off in a traffic circle in the northeastern city of Maiduguri as a police vehicle drove by, injuring five civilians, said Maj. Gen. Jack Nwaogbo of the Nigerian military’s unit in charge of Maiduguri, called Operation Restore Order.
Although nobody has claimed responsibility for the latest blast, the group known as Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a barrage of recent bombings and shootings that have collectively killed more than 100 people. The group says it wants Islamic Sharia law applied throughout Nigeria and a public trial for the killing of its leader, who in 2009 died in police custody. Boko Haram is loosely translated in the local Hausa language as “Western education is sin.”
The military last month took over control of security in Maiduguri, but that hasn’t stopped attacks. Nigerian security forces have stepped up patrols and checkpoints in several northern cities and have arrested and are holding several dozen Boko Haram suspects, although no public charges have been brought.
But some local community groups, including a group of local elders, say the military’s presence has exacerbated tensions. They accused the military of indiscriminate shooting and have asked the soldiers to leave.
The Nigerian military says it isn’t the problem. “Local people are the ones detonating bombs,” said Gen. Nwaogbo. “We are the ones being attacked. The federal government gave us a task, and the federal government is the only group who can say our task is over.”
The military crackdown has put Nigeria’s civilian leadership in an awkward spot. After Boko Haram issued a statement demanding as one of its conditions for halting attacks public apologies from certain politicians for alleged extrajudicial killings of Boko Haram members and for not enforcing strict Sharia law, several complied, including two former governors and one current governor, Isa Yuguda of Bauchi state. Mr. Yuguda didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The public apologies have alarmed some political observers.
“It shows that [security agencies] are not on top of the situation,” said Mannir Dan Ali, the editor of Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust, of the public apologies. “Because [the governors] think it’s more effective for them to apologize.”
Nigerian officials appear conflicted about the best way to tackle the problem. Military officials, including Andrew Azazi, the national security adviser and a former general, have favored direct military confrontation. But intelligence officials say a military approach will only drive the group into hiding.
“We should be sending plainclothes intelligence officers into the communities to get to know them, how they get their arms and funds, but we took the military option,” a senior Nigerian security official said, adding, “They want to crush them by military force, but [the military isn’t] trained for something like this.”
The official said security agencies have been checking guest houses and hotels throughout the north of the country looking for foreign suspects, and have financial experts investigating the group’s source of funding.
“We have not detected any direct foreign influence so far,” the official said.
Boko Haram has been able to carry out the attacks despite not having a recognizable leader. The group existed as a mostly nonviolent fringe Islamic sect in northern Nigeria until 2009, when a series of confrontations with the police led to the deaths of several hundred group members, including the death of the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf.
The Nigerian police have admitted killing Mr. Yusuf while he was in their custody, but said it was the act of rogue officers.
Since then, the group has carried out bombings and assassinations of public figures that have spoken out against them.
Its most audacious attack came on June 16, when a bomb went off at the Nigerian police headquarters in Abuja, the capital, just yards away from the police inspector general, killing at least two people.
Security officials say that while some members of Boko Haram may have fled to nearby Niger or Chad and received training in those countries, there aren’t yet definitive ties to foreign terrorist groups.
“It is still a Nigerian problem, created by the government’s inability to deal with the original group,” said a Western security official based in Nigeria. “But the danger is that you create a big enough group, through police and security inefficiency, that they do start making contact with other groups along the country’s porous borders. And then their choice of targets would change.”