About five thousand Muslims escaped what could have been a tragedy as five potential bombers were caught by officials of the Joint Task Force, in Maiduguri, Borno.
The attempt to carry out a major attack at the nerve-centre of the Boko Haram insurgency is coming hours after President Muhammadu Buhari declared that the Nigerian Army had won the war against Boko Haram.
The five potential Boko Haram bombers were arrested with five big food flasks at Medinatu Mosque, where Muslims were celebrating Maulud Nabiyi, the birth of Prophet Mohammed.
According to Premium Times, the bombers claimed to have hot rice inside the giant food flasks loaded with bombs.
Aminu Abdullahi, an operative of the Civillan-JTF, was quoted to have said: “When we saw them coming with handpush-cart filled with food flasks, we thought they were normal people that usually come here.”
“We almost passed them on when one of our members instinctively asked what the content of the large food flasks were, and they said ‘hot rice to be delivered to the Sheik’s guests’.
All of us were almost deceived but when we insisted on seeing the flasks opened for proper inspection, the conveyors became jittery, and by the time we forced them to open the flask we were shocked to find coupled bombs in all the flasks”.
Meanwhile, the spokesman of the Borno State branch of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Muhammed Abba Gava, was also reported to have confirmed the arrest.
“It was an act of God that those bombs were Intercepted on time: we have over 5000 people converging in Abdulfathi’s mosque and who knows what could have become of them had those bombs detonated.”
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