Security agencies in Nigeria are struggling to check the spread of a radical Islamist group, after a spate of deadly bombings signaled the militants’ ambitions to shed their roots as an isolated force in the country’s north.
Nigeria’s military has taken control of the northeastern city of Maiduguri from the police and stepped up patrols and vehicle searches in other cities, including the capital, Abuja. Their moves came as police attributed two attacks in Maiduguri—a Sunday bombing at a beer garden in the town that killed 25 people, and a Monday attack there that killed three more—to the group, known as Boko Haram.
Boko Haram hasn’t issued statements following the attacks.
Local press said police have arrested about five dozen people in connection with the attacks, but police declined to comment.
Boko Haram—which loosely translates from the Hausa language as “Western Education Is Forbidden”—is the country’s most prominent radical Islamist militant group. Estimates of membership vary from a few hundred to several thousand members. For the past two years, it had been known primarily for attacks on police stations, local politicians and religious leaders who spoke out against the group in northeastern Nigeria.
But the beer-garden bombing and other attacks show how it is willing to inflict more civilian casualties as it attempts to spread an ideology that mirrors that of other militant Islamic groups in Africa and beyond.
Boko Haram says it wants Sharia law practiced throughout Nigeria—including a ban on alcohol—and a reduced police presence in its northern strongholds.
Nigerian police until now largely have met Boko Haram with bluster: Earlier this month, Inspector General of Police Hafiz Ringim vowed he would wipe out the group within 10 days.
Shortly after that boast, a bomb went off in the parking lot of Nigeria’s police headquarters in Abuja, narrowly missing Mr. Ringim and killing three people. Boko Haram claimed responsibility. Police initially called the attack a suicide bombing but later said it was most likely a bomb linked to a timer.
Mr. Ringim, who has traveled to the U.S. in part to address a Washington think tank on police reform in Nigeria, will also seek U.S. assistance in combating the group, security officials said.
No senior Boko Haram members have been arrested or publicly charged, though human-rights group say many people, including civilians, are being detained by security agencies without due process. Nigerian military officials didn’t respond to requests for comment on the accusations. A police spokesman declined to comment.
Security officials say that while some members of Boko Haram may have received training in nearby Niger or Chad, there aren’t yet definitive ties to foreign terrorist groups.
Security agencies became aware of Boko Haram when its leaders began preaching extremist rhetoric in the mid-2000s. The homegrown group gained additional supporters after Nigerian police killed several hundred members in a 2009 crackdown. Its then-leader, Mohamed Yusuf, was killed by police during the crackdown while in custody.
Instead of wiping out Boko Haram, that crackdown appears to have attracted more young recruits—mostly jobless young Muslims in the north—and emboldened it. The group “has been allowed to grow for too long,” said a Western security official in Abuja. “The escalation is definitely cause for concern. It’s not a problem that’s going to go away.”
On Tuesday, the heads of the U.S. and the European Union embassies in Nigeria issued a joint statement condemning the recent attacks, calling them “horrific acts of violence” and stating that “there should be no impunity for the perpetrators.”
The attacks also suggest a deepening of the divide between northern and southern Nigeria, analysts say. Predominantly Christian southern Nigeria is home to most of the country’s big companies, its banks and oil firms, and the southern Delta region is the source of the oil the government depends on for more than 90% of its revenue.
Largely Muslim northern Nigeria, once home to a thriving textile and agricultural sector, is now one of the poorer regions in the world, with high infant and maternal mortality rates and one of the lowest female literacy rates world-wide.
“I think they’re a relatively small group and essentially local,” said Rausu Mustapha, an African politics lecturer at Oxford University. “But that they have so many young men without jobs behind them—and that they’ve started to attract middle-class residents in the north—that cocktail is quite dangerous.”