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Minister Faults Jonathan's Comments On 2nd Abuja Bomb Blast

The Minister of Interior, Capt. Emmanuel Iheanacho (Retd.), has faulted the comment by President Goodluck Jonathan linking the New Year eve Abuja bomb blast to the equally deadly Christmas day explosions in Jos, the Plateau State capital.

The Minister of Interior, Capt. Emmanuel Iheanacho (Retd.), has faulted the comment by President Goodluck Jonathan linking the New Year eve Abuja bomb blast to the equally deadly Christmas day explosions in Jos, the Plateau State capital.

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Jonathan had, while speaking at the New Year service of the Evangelical Church of West Africa (ECWA), in Abuja claimed that the explosives used in the Abacha Barracks bombing in Abuja bore similarity to the ones that exploded in Jos.

But after inspecting the scene of the blast on Sunday, Mr. Iheanacho said it was wrong and premature for anyone to link the Abuja and Jos bombings while investigations were still going on.

Noting that investigators were still collating evidence and working hard to apprehend the perpetrators, the minister declared that it was hasty to draw the kind of conclusion that the president drew in his speech.

In his comment, Mr. Jonathan had said, "The preliminary analysis of the explosives so far used in Nigeria, the one used in the 1st October explosion has the same characteristics with the ones that happened in Port Harcourt, Warri and some parts of the Niger Delta, it has been classified."

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He then concluded, "The one that happened yesterday, from preliminary analysis, is identical with the ones that happened in Jos. So there are two routes, so as long as the security operatives know where the two routes are, we will get to where these things are coming from."

The president was speaking even as detectives were gathering fragments of the explosives, without a “preliminary report” in sight. 

Mr. Iheanacho thought his principal’s summation at that stage of the investigation to be wrong.  He assured Nigerians, however, that security agents would arrest the masterminds of the blasts adding that the bombing was politically-motivated.

“Government will fish out the perpetrators of this blast," he said. "People can have [some] political differences but it is not enough to cause havoc.  Nobody can stampede government."

It would be recalled that after the October 1, 2010 bomb blast, Jonathan had hurriedly exonerated Niger Delta militants from the crime even when the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the explosion.

The president's comment riled not a few Nigerians at the time, most of whom accused him of being clannish and sectional. Jonathan is from the restive Niger Delta region.

 Jonathan's outburst was reportedly responsible for his handlers asking him not to say much in public during his visit to the bomb site at the Mammy market attached to Abuja’s Mogadishu Barracks.  Scores of patrons, including off-duty soldiers, were killed.
 

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