Nigeria arrests alleged Al Qaeda operatives

Nigeria said it arrested a group of men it alleges have ties to Al Qaeda and who were in possession of bomb making materials in three northern states, though some analysts are questioning the extent of Al Qaeda's presence in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan African nations.

Reuters reports that the Nigerian government announced the arrests on Monday.

The U.S. embassy warned in September that Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, was at risk of "terrorist attack", and Osama bin Laden once named the country as ripe for jihad, but Nigeria has yet to see any major attack in the style of al Qaeda.

Nigerian police and the secretive (State Security Service) have made sporadic arrests of suspected jihadists for some years and trials have been launched, but there has been no conviction and no conclusive evidence of al Qaeda's presence in Nigeria has been made public.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is divided about equally between Christians and Muslims. The two communities usually live side by side peacefully but there are occasional outbreaks of religious violence.

Tensions worsened in the northern part of the country after 12 state governments introduced a stricter enforcement of sharia law in 2000, alienating sizeable Christian minorities. Thousands were killed in sporadic riots.

The British Broadcasting Corp. reports that there has been little corroboration of past claims of Al Qaeda activity in the country, adding that the US and Britain have been particularly concerned about the potential of terrorist cells establishing themselves there.

… Over the last few years the Nigerian authorities have detained many suspected militants yet have failed to produce any substantive evidence of an al-Qaeda presence or terrorist plot in the country and there's never been a terrorist attack here.

There are some radical Islamic sects who exist in the effectively borderless arid areas where northern Nigeria meets Chad and Niger.

Given that Nigeria is a major oil producer yet its population is poor and equally split between Muslims and Christians, British and American officials have long been obsessed that Nigeria was ripe for al-Qaeda-style groups.

Though there is little evidence of widespread Al Qaeda activity, chaos and lawlessness prevail in many corners of Africa's largest country, and such conditions have worked to the benefit of Al Qaeda operatives in the past in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.

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