Boko Haram leader appears in YouTube video as government accuses group of hijacking protests over cuts to fuel subsidies
Threats from a radical Islamist group piled pressure on Nigeria's beleaguered government, which warned that the country risked sliding into anarchy as popular protests over cuts to fuel subsidies that have strangled Africa's top oil economy entered a third day.
Abubakar Shekau, leader of the Boko Haram Islamist movement, waded into the growing unrest in Nigeria in his first ever televised appearance on Wednesday. Sitting between two Kalashnikov rifles and wearing a bullet-proof vest, he challenged security forces to defeat the organisation, whose campaign to impose strict Islamic sharia law across Nigeria killed some 500 people last year.
A day after gunmen from the group killed eight people in the rural northern state of Yobe, and a mosque and Islamic school were burnt in the south, Nobel prize-winning author Wole Soyinka warned that the increasing sectarian tensions resembled the build up to civil conflict in 1967. A million people died in the Biafra war when Igbo ethnics tried to secede from Nigeria.
The northern-based group, whose name means "non-Islamic education is sacrilege," stepped up a low-level insurgency after its leader was killed in government custody two years ago. It has since broadened its campaign, threatening to fracture Africa's most populous country along sectarian lines. A spree of church bombings since December has killed around 60 people and sparked retaliatory attacks from Christians, who are the majority in the south. Threats by Boko Haram, which the US government says has international ambitions, have prompted Christians who live, work and marry in the country's Muslim-dominated north to flee southwards.
"They killed our brothers and ate their flesh in Jos," Shekau said in a video posted on YouTube, referring to claims last year of Christian youths burning and eating Muslims during periodic clashes in the state of Plateau, a melting pot of religious and ethnic tensions. "We are also at war with Christians," he said.
Ifemaka Obaze, an Igbo housewife whose father fought in the civil war, said: "They are trying to provoke a war. There's no need. If they want to kill Nigerians, then they should go and set up their own country and leave us in peace."
Grappling simultaneously with protesters, strained party politics and Boko Haram, President Goodluck Jonathan faces his toughest test since being elected in May. Earlier this week, an admission that Boko Haram has infiltrated the top level of government exposed the fraught path his administration has to navigate.
"What Boko Haram is doing amounts to blackmail and no responsible government will succumb to that kind of tactic. As part of their quest to destabilise the country, they are hijacking the demonstrations," interior minister Abba Moro told the Guardian following a meeting with security officials at the presidential villa to discuss how to deal with the twin challenges.
"Many of the people leading the demonstrations are failed politicians who are now adopting holier-than-thou attitudes. But to the labour union leaders, we are ready to sit around the table and talk with them," Moro added.
However, labour union members ignored a "no work, no pay" decree from the country's attorney general and swelled the ranks of thousands of Nigerians marching through the main cities, while oil workers said they were on "red alert" as they mulled a walk out of Nigeria's 2m barrel per day sector unless the subsidies were fully reinstated. Nigeria is forced to import 70% of its own refined oil as decades of mismanagement means it has barely functioning refineries.
Widespread fury at the removal of the subsidies, which President Jonathan has likened to a "cancer" that eats more than $6bn (£3.9bn) in government funding annually, has set the stage for a bitter showdown. In the impoverished Jakonde neighbourhood of Lagos, gangs of youths prevented residents from leaving their houses.
"It has been a terrible day, a really messed up day," said taxi driver Segun Alabi. "People have been trying to get to the market for even some small food, or to make a little money, but the area boys have said they are striking on our behalf and stopped any cars from leaving. Children are hungry at home."
In the northern state of Kaduna, residents defied a 24-hour curfew declared after recent Boko Haram attacks killed six there and police shot dead a protestor on Tuesday when a mob attempted to attack the governor's house. "We just marched through the streets to defy the curfew. We marched through police checkpoints and we made it very clear that we intend to continue marching for as long as necessary," teacher Nafissa Tafewa said.
In Niger state, official buildings were attacked by crowds of angry protesters, prompting the government to widen a state of emergency in several northern states.