LAGOS
A top Nigerian Christian leader said the perpetrators of Monday's deadly bombing attack in the capital Abuja, widely assumed to be Boko Haram militants, deserves to be fed to pigs.
"This [bombing] is very inhumane, ungodly and barbaric," Ayo Oritsejafor, President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"As far as I am concerned, the perpetrators are not human beings and in my own opinion, when they finally die their corpses should be given to pigs because they are on the same level with pigs," he added.
Some 75 people were killed in a Monday bomb blast in one of Abuja's largest car parks.
The blast occurred in a section of the park used by El-Rufai Buses, a major interstate transport company.
Though no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, it is widely blamed on Boko Haram.
Reliable sources told Anadolu Agency earlier that security agencies had recovered the body of a man – festooned with charms and amulets usually associated with members of the militant Boko Haram group – from the bombing site.
Oritsejafor, meanwhile, accused certain elements within the Nigerian security agencies of working with the militants.
"There are people within the security agencies that sympathize with this madness," he claimed.
"As they discover them, they should be exposed and dismissed from the service," said Oritsejafor, a very controversial figure especially among Muslims.
He once described Boko Haram as a device being used to "Islamize" Nigeria, a claim rejected even by some Christian clergymen.
More than 1000 people have been killed by the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria's three northeastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa in recent weeks.
A hitherto peaceful organization that had preached against government corruption, Boko Haram suddenly turned violent in 2009 following the murder of its leader, Mohamed Yusuf, while in police custody.
In the years since, the group has been blamed for thousands of terrorist acts, including attacks on churches and security posts across Nigeria's northern region.
Although it claims to want an Islamist government in the region, Nigerian Muslims – most of whom reject Boko Haram as un-Islamic – have also been targeted by the militant group.
By Rafiu Ajakaye
englishnews@aa.com.tr
