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Nigeria: Police chief and deputies replaced
The committee’s goals included: “To determine the general and specific causes of the collapse of public confidence in the police and recommend ways of restoring public trust in the institution; examine records of performance of officers of the Nigeria Police Force with a view to identifying those that can no longer fit into the system.”
Police arrested Kabiru Sokoto in connection with a December 25 bombing last week and while they were taking him from police headquarters to his house in Abaji, outside Abuja, to conduct a search there, their vehicle came under fire and he escaped.
Security sources said it was a “dangerous and suspicious” way to handle a suspect.
Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bombing of St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, on the outskirts of Abuja, which killed 37 people and wounded 57, the deadliest of a series of a attacks on Christmas.
Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language of northern Nigeria means “Western education is sinful”, is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. It became active around 2003 and is concentrated mainly in the northern Nigerian states.
Nigeria’s population of more than 160 million people is roughly split between a largely Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.
