For residents of Kaduna State, these are sweaty times as Police intelligence report have revealed that no fewer than 221 suspected suicide bombers have been deployed by the Boko Haram fundamentalists in different locations of state.
A top Police officer attached to the Force Intelligence Unit (FIU) and deployed to Kaduna State, disclosed this to our reporter but he assured that security operatives are on top of the situation.
He added that the suspected members of the Boko Haram Islamic sect have also vowed to over-run Kaduna State, especially the Southern part of the state which is predominantly Christian community.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police (CP) Kaduna State Police Command of the Nigeria Police Force, Aderenle Shinaba, confirmed that an explosion occurred around the Asikolaye/Bakin Ruwa area, along the Kaduna western bypass at about 10.00hrs (10.00am) of Wednesday.
The Kano Police Commissioner also said that the Command has discovered 13 high-calibre Improvised Explosive Devices at Sauna-Fafunga in Dakata area of Kano metropolis.
The Commissioner of Police, Shinaba, displayed the explosives were discovered at about 1.30p.m. on Wednesday, in a rickety car parked near a Mosque.
“When we got the information, we quickly moved in to the place and in the course of screening the vehicle, our anti-bomb squad discovered the explosives.
“The explosives were primed to explode when the Muslim prayer session is going on in the Mosque, and they can destroy a whole neighbourhood because they are of high calibre,” he said. Shinaba said the police had to defuse one of them but the Anti-bomb Squad advised that they should be removed from the area.
“The cylinders discovered are of high calibre as they can ruin and destroy a whole village,” the commissioner said. Shinaba commended the people of Kano for the timely information they gave to the police which saved the situation. He also urged the people to continue to give security agencies useful information to enable them to carry out their duty effectively.
Meanwhile, details of fatalities, casualties and other damage of the Wednesday blast were still sketchy at the time of filing this report, but sources said the late morning explosion shattered many of the glass windows of some of the business premises around the area where the explosion occurred.
Three suicide bomb attacks on churches had rocked the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, killing at least 21 people and wounding about 100, last month.
They prompted protests in a region that has previously been hit by religious tensions. The first two blasts occurred within minutes of each other and targeted churches in the city of Zaria, police said. A third blast hit a church in the city of Kaduna about half an hour later.
An official working for a relief agency involved in rescue efforts had said 21 people had been killed and at least 100 people wounded. The Zaria attacks killed the bomber and at least one other person and left 51 wounded, a Nigerian Red Cross official said earlier. The Kaduna attack claimed 10 lives and wounded 29 people, he said.
Police said security prevented the suicide bombers from ramming explosive-laden cars into the churches. “If not for security, there would have been (many) more casualties,” said Mohammed Abubakar Jinjiri, the Kaduna state police chief.
Churches have been increasingly targeted by violence in Nigeria. Last weekend, a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside a church in central Nigeria and gunmen attacked another church in the north-east, killing at least six people and wounding dozens of others.
