The security forces on Tuesday surrounded and shelled parts of a compound believed to be home to Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the radical Boko Haram sect, destroying buildings including a small mosque. But the preacher’s whereabouts were unknown.
Yusuf’s supporters -- armed with machetes, knives, home-made hunting rifles and petrol bombs -- have attacked churches, police stations, prisons and government buildings in parts of the mostly Muslim north in recent days.
The violence erupted when members of Boko Haram, which wants a wider adoption of Islamic sharia law across Africa’s most populous nation, were arrested on Sunday in Bauchi state.
Unrest spread to the northern states of Kano, Yobe and Borno, whose capital Maiduguri is Yusuf’s base.
President Umaru Yar’Adua, who has directed the security forces to take all necessary action to contain the sect members, on Tuesday met with security chiefs and the governors of the affected states, pledging a final operation to flush them out.
"These people have been organised and are penetrating our society and procuring arms and gathering information on how to make explosions and bombs to force their view on the rest of Nigerians,“ Yar’Adua said.
"We are going to continue with security surveillance all over the northern states and fish out any remnant of this group and deal with them promptly,“ he told reporters in Abuja.
Police in Maiduguri have said 90 of the rioters have been killed as well as eight police officers, three prison officials and two soldiers. More than 50 people were killed in Sunday’s violence in Bauchi and several more have died in Kano and Yobe.
"POVERTY AND INJUSTICE"
More than 200 ethnic groups generally live peacefully side by side in Nigeria, a country of around 140 million people, although civil war left one million dead between 1967 and 1970 and there have been bouts of religious unrest since then.
The four northern states are among the 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states that started a stricter enforcement of sharia in 2000 -- a decision that has alienated sizeable Christian minorities and sparked bouts of sectarian violence that killed thousands.
The group has made no clear demands beyond calling for a new leader in Nigeria ready to implement sharia law. Its members include students as well as illiterate, jobless youths whipped into an anti-establishment frenzy over a period of years.
Yusuf’s views have little traction with most of Nigeria’s moderate Muslim population.
Police in Sokoto state in the northwest arrested five members of Boko Haram -- which means "Western education is a sin“ -- late on Tuesday, including former university lecturer Kadiru Atiku, believed to be the group’s local leader.
"Poverty, injustice and the inability of the government of the day to implement the sharia legal system is the reason why the sect is calling for a change of leadership for Nigeria,“ Atiku told reporters after his arrest.
Police said the five men had been found with weapons including knives and machetes and were thought to be planning attacks on members of the public and security agencies.
