A man with suspected explosive devices was arrested in Nigeria near the international airport in Lagos, the commercial capital, according to the West African nation’s airspace agency.
The man was detained along the airport road outside the offices of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency yesterday when security personnel found him with “some devices suspected to be explosives,” Supo Atobatele, a spokesman for the agency known as NAMA, said in an e-mailed statement. “He was subsequently handed over to the airport police command for further investigation.”
The leader of Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, said in a video last month that it was responsible for the June 25 blast at a fuel depot in Lagos, the first time the insurgent sect laid claim to an attack on the coastal hub that is home to over 20 million people and sub-Saharan Africa’s most populated city. Calls to Lagos state police spokeswoman Ngozi Braide didn’t connect.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is a sin” in the local Hausa language, wants to impose Shariah, or Islamic law, in Africa’s most populous country. The nation of about 170 million people is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. Most of its attacks have been in the northeast, where most victims are poor Nigerians in villages and markets.
By Chris Kay
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