GCPEA News

Nigerian police stop car bomber’s attempt to blow up school

Police have been tackling terrorism across Nigeria
A World At School, July 8, 2014

Students taking an exam at a secondary school in Nigeria survived an attempt to blow them up using a car laden with explosives.

Police acting on a tip-off foiled the plot on July 7 after the car was abandoned outside the school in Gombe with 12 improvised explosives in it. Bomb disposal experts defused the home-made bombs.

Police spokesman Fwaje Attajiri said: “The explosives had the capacity of causing maximum damage and would have caused huge casualties had they detonated in the school with a high student population.” He would not say if any arrests had been made or if Boko Haram was suspected to be behind the planned attack.

The Nigerian website THISDAYLive said the driver had attempted in vain to detonate the explosives by ramming the Honda Odyssey several times against the walls of the Government Day Secondary School (Pilot) in the Tudun Wada area of Gombe.

The final year students were taking a maths exam when the car was driven up to the school.

Boko Haram has  killed more than 100 students in attacks on nearby Yobe state in the past year. The militant extremists are also still holding the schoolgirls abducted from Chibok.

The Safe Schools Initiative has been launched in response to the attacks on education in Nigeria.