Earlier this week, Nigeria witnessed its first suicide bombing. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group based in northern Nigeria, claimed responsibility for the attack. The target was inspector general of the police Hafiz Ringim, whose motorcade entered the headquarters in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, minutes before the attack. The same day, there was an explosion at a church in the northern Nigerian town of Damboa, for which Boko Haram is also believed to be responsible. The group, sometimes referred to as the Nigerian Taliban, earlier claimed responsibility for a rash of bombings in northern Nigeria immediately after Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration two weeks ago.
Just a day before the attacks, Boko Haram disclosed that it had links to radical Islamists in Somalia. A written statement read, “Very soon, we will wage jihad…We want to make it known that our jihadists have arrived in Nigeria from Somalia where they received real training on warfare from our brethren who made that country ungovernable… This time round, our attacks will be fiercer and wider than they have been.”
