National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has clarified that it did not attribute the explosion that occurred on Monday afternoon in Abuja to a suicide bomber.
Gatekeepers News reports that the incident took place at a bus stop opposite the Mogadishu cantonment along the Mararaba-Nyanya expressway, resulting in injuries to one individual.
Initially, NEMA reported via its X account that the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber attempting to enter the military barracks with an improvised explosive device (IED).
However, this claim was challenged on Wednesday by Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), who indicated that security agencies had not classified the incident as a suicide bombing.
“So don’t go and create an impression and put fear in people. NEMA is not the head of security. Security agencies are there,” he said.
“What happened was that there was somebody that went to where we have these quarries, where they blast all these rocks.
“The person took the explosive and put it in his pocket. Of course, some of them may not even understand the implication of that, and so it exploded on him.
“So, that does not mean that it is a suicide bomber. We should be careful in the story we are planting; let’s not send the wrong message to the residents.”
A statement from Lere Olayinka, Wike’s media aide, confirmed that NEMA retracted its earlier report, stating that the agency did not support the assertion that the explosion was an attempted suicide bombing.
NEMA attributed the misleading information on its X account to a breach of the platform.
“Emphasizing that its roles in emergencies is to coordinate stakeholders’ response, the Agency noted that the security agencies are responsible for investigating and establishing the cause of such incidents,” the statement reads.
“It attributed the unverified social media post to a breach of its platform that is currently being investigated.
“The Agency drew attention to its statement on the incident as released by the Press Unit, which reported NEMA’s coordinating response at the scene of the explosion with no reference whatsoever to the cause of the incident, which is the remit of the Nigeria Police and other security agencies.”
