By Nick Tattersall
Maiduguri - Members of a radical sect in northern Nigeria were caught with bomb-making equipment weeks before an uprising in which close to 800 people were killed, a senior state government official said.
Borno state deputy governor Alhaji Adamu Dibal said Mohammed Yusuf, a charismatic preacher and leader of the militant Boko Haram sect, had been well-known to intelligence agencies for several years and had been planning bomb attacks targeting the local authorities.
"Mohammed Yusuf was preparing to launch an attack in the month of Ramadan, which is in about two weeks time," Dibal told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday at his residence in the state capital Maiduguri.
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"That is why most of the equipment they used in preparing bombs was all at the preparatory stage," he said, opening photographs on his laptop computer of barrels of chemicals seized during police raids.
Yusuf, who was shot dead in police detention last Thursday, was vehemently anti-establishment. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is sinful", is loosely modelled on the Taliban in Afghanistan and wants a stricter implementation of sharia (Islamic law) across Nigeria.
Yusuf's followers staged a five-day uprising in several northern cities last week, attacking buildings seen as symbols of authority from prisons and police stations to primary schools and local government offices.
Dibal said tensions in Maiduguri had surfaced around six weeks ago, triggered by a dispute over a new law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets - which sect members refused to respect - in which police shot and injured several Boko Haram followers to prevent a riot.
Yusuf wrote to President Umaru Yar'Adua, the vice president, defence minister and other officials including the Borno state governor vowing revenge for what he saw as an attack on his followers.
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