Maiduguri, Nigeria - Gunmen in Borno State capital, Maiduguri, yesterday shot dead an Islamic scholar after he had been openly critical of a radical sect behind a spate of recent killings, witnesses and police officials said.
Sheikh Bashir Mustapha had just returned from a wedding when he was shot inside his home in Maiduguri a day after taking part in a radio discussion in which he condemned the radical Boko Haram sect, witnesses said.
"Two people on a motorcycle came and one of them went into the Sheikh's compound. After some time the other person followed and then gun shots were heard from inside the house," a senior police official who asked not to be named told Reuters.
"They shot dead the Sheikh and one of his followers."
Recent killings of police officers, traditional leaders and politicians in and around Maiduguri have raised fears that Boko Haram, which wants sharia (Islamic law) applied more widely across the country, is staging a comeback.
Its members staged an uprising in Maiduguri last year, attacking symbols of government authority including prisons, police stations and schools, leading to clashes with security forces in which an estimated 800 people were killed.
It can ill afford insecurity in the north as it prepares for a presidential election set to be the most fiercely contested since the end of military rule just over a decade ago.
Security has been tightened in recent months in Maiduguri. The police and army have carried out joint patrols and imposed a dusk-to-dawn ban on motorcycles, used in some shootings.
Inmates at a prison holding Boko Haram members in Bauchi, southwest of Maiduguri, set part of the building on fire this week, a month after a jailbreak in which gunmen thought to be from Boko Haram freed hundreds of prisoners.
Boko Haram members said in a radio interview broadcast in the local Hausa language last month that they were behind recent shootings, and warned they would kill more officials.
Gunmen killed a vice chairman of the opposition All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP) at his home in Maiduguri on Thursday, and local residents said they believed Boko Haram was responsible.
Nigeria, a vast nation of more than 140 million people, is roughly equally divided between Christians and Muslims.
Boko Haram's views are not espoused by the vast majority of the Muslim population, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa, although poverty, unemployment and a lack of education have helped sect leaders to gain a cult-like following.