Members of the Civilian Joint Task Force on Thursday intercepted bomb filled-food warmers being pushed towards a crowded mosque in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.
The mosque was filled to the brim in celebration of the Maulud Nabiy, which is the birth of Prophet Mohammed, when the suspects were intercepted.
Reports say but for the intervention of the Civilian JTF, several persons could have been killed.
Five persons, believed to be members of Boko Haram, were pushing the cart on which the warmers were placed towards the Medinatu Mosque where adherents of the Tijjaniya Islamic sect were marking the Maulud Nabiy.
Aminu Abdullahi, an operative of the Civilian-JTF said “When we saw them coming with hand pushed cart filled with food flasks, we thought they were normal people that usually come here,”
Abdullahi added: “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.
The spokesman of the Borno State branch of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Muhammed Abba Gava, who confirmed the development, added that “It was an act of God that those bombs were Intercepted on time: we have over 5,000 people converging in Abdulfathi’s mosque and who knows what could have become of them had those bombs detonated.”
The suspects have been handed over to security operatives