Nine killed as militants attack police station in Nigeria

The army killed 25 Islamic fundamentalists in the Nigerian city of Kano after a militant group attacked a police station on Tuesday.

The group, said to number up to 300 strong, killed nine policemen and the wife of one of them in the attack and then barricaded themselves in a nearby waterworks before the army arrived to storm the building.

Kano, in the north of the country, has a history of fundamentalist sects. In 1982 more than 5,000 people were killed in riots inspired by Islamic fundamentalists and in more recent times a group calling themselves the Taliban attacked police stations in the north until they were wiped out. Many Nigerian newspapers referred to this group as Talibans, while others said they were speaking Arabic.

The motive for the attack on the police station was not immediately clear. Some reports speculated that it was in protest at perceived police inactivity after the murder of a well-known Islamic cleric, Sheik Ja'afar Mahmud Adam, as he led prayers at a Kano mosque last Friday. But Islamic preachers in the city denied that the attack on the police station had anything to do with the dead cleric.

The deaths added to tensions already high in Nigeria following the threat by opposition parties to boycott presidential elections on Saturday. Many in Nigeria fear that if the elections do not go ahead, the country will be plunged into chaos. One Western diplomat said the next 72 hours would be the most important in Nigeria's history.

Following last Saturday's disputedelections for state governors, which many believe were rife with corruption and vote rigging, 18 opposition candidates gathered in the Abuja Hilton Hotel and issued an ultimatum, threatening to boycott the forthcoming election unless the governor polls were declared void, the electoral commission replaced and the presidential election postponed. The government called their bluff and rejected the demands, citing a high court ruling two weeks ago that prohibits the election from being postponed.

Although President Olusegun Obasanjo has become unpopular - largely because of his attempt last year to change the constitution and run for a third term - his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is sufficiently well run and funded to win the election without resorting to rigging. Nevertheless, the accusations do not appear to be without foundation.

The results of last Saturday's elections in the country's 36 states gave 26 of the 32 states declared so far to the PDP, leaving many Nigerians flabbergasted. In the Rivers state more votes were cast than there were registered voters. Although in some states the party predicted to win did so, several others predicted to go to the opposition were awarded to the PDP.

However, observers questioned what the opposition parties hoped to gain by the boycott. There was little support for it among Nigerians, or even for an investigation of last week's poll.

There is also a feeling that Western diplomats rather like Umaru Yar'Adua, the man Mr Obasanjo has put up to succeed him. Although many have said in private that they do not believe the elections were or will be free and fair, they will probably accept whatever the outcome is. Or as one Nigerian commentator put it, referring to the well-known Nigerian email scam: "Obasanjo has done a 419 on the G8".