Nigeria's unrelenting violence

With Nigeria still reeling from Friday's (28.11.14) attack on a mosque in Kano in which more than 100 worshippers died, the country reverberated at the start of the new week to yet another round of lethal terrorist attacks blamed on the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram.

Two explosions ripped through a market in Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, on Monday nearly a week after two female suicide bombers attacked the same area, killing more than 45 people.

A witness said a middle-aged woman approached the site where chicken sellers attend to customers but vigilantes who stood nearby insisted on checking the luggage she was carrying. But the woman refused, arguing that what she held were her wares. While the argument ensued, some people gathered at the scene and that was when she detonated the explosive. Dozens of people are feared dead.

Monday's violence in Nigeria began before dawn in Damaturu, capital of Yobe state. Residents fled, or tried to hide, as suspected Islamist militants charged into the town shouting and firing their guns.

Nigeria's defense military headquarter said a fighter jet was repelling the attackers. One witness confirmed seeing a military plane circling overhead and said the militants had tried to shoot it down with anti-aircraft guns.

Muslims urged to defend themselves within the law

On Sunday Nigeria's top Islamic body, Jama'atu Nasri Islam, accused the authorities of failing to protect citizens from Boko Haram and urged Mulsims "to take all defensive measures" under the law to protect themselves.

The statement was issued after the coordinated sucide bomb and gun attacks at the Central Mosque in Kano on Friday in which more than 100 worshippers died and more than 270 were wounded.

After the attack, which drew condemnation from world leaders, the Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, vowed that Muslims would never be intimidated into abandoning their faith.

Nigeria's embattled President Goodluck Jonathan vowed to hunt the attackers behind the raid on the mosque. A statement from his office on Saturday said security agencies had been directed to "launch a full scale investigation and to leave no stone unturned until all agents of terror had been tracked down and brought to justice."

Previous promises of inquiries have not led to any noticeable reduction in the scale or number of attacks.

"We are in despair the people of northern Nigiera, both Muslims and Christians, because of the dismal failure of the Nigeria government" Tukul Abdulkadir, a lecturer in political science at Kaduna State University, told DW.

Sanusi, who was abroad when the attack on the mosque occurred, returned to inspect the building on Saturday.

"From all indications, they (the attackers) have been planning this for at least two months," he told reporters at the airport without elaborating.

Facing growing concern over his apparent inability to curb the violence - spotlighted by the plight of the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls - Jonathan asked Nigeria's national assembly to extend the 18-month-old state of emergency in the northeastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

Call for Jonathan's impeachment

However, no decision has been reached and the controversial measure expired on November 20. That same day parliamentary proceedings for a debate about the measure ended in a grotesque farce when police fired tear gas inside the assembly building.

Opposition members have since called for President Jonathan to be impeached.

In a report released in late November, the International Crisis Group (ICG) noted that the Nigerian opposition were increasingly viewing the security services as political enforcers for Jonathan's ruling PDP party.

Nigerians go to the polls in February, but the country's elections body had conceded that an election may be impossible in those three troubled states, the IGC said.

ICG concluded that "a contested result could easily set fire to a combustible political atmosphere."

"People are now becoming more and more sharply divided along regional and religious lines," Abdulkadir said.