From Reuters:
LAGOS - The United States closed its Nigerian embassy in Abuja and consulate in Lagos on Friday due to a "security incident" which is being investigated by Nigerian police, an embassy spokesman said.A diplomatic source said intelligence indicated that foreign militants posed a specific threat to the U.S. presence in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter which was named by Osama bin Laden as a candidate for "liberation."
"The embassy is reacting to a security incident and we thought it prudent to close," said an embassy spokesman, adding that he had no information on the nature of the incident.
Nigerian police were acting on information provided by the United States and the results of their investigation would be made public, the spokesman said.
The diplomatic source said the embassy had received information from foreign Islamic militant channels on a specific threat to the Lagos consulate.
"This is not a Nigerian source and there is not necessarily Nigerian participation, but we can't be sure of that," the source said.
Britain also closed its Nigerian High Commission office in Lagos due to a "security reason," a spokesman said.
Nigeria's population of 140 million people are divided roughly evenly between Muslims and Christians and the country has a long history of religious bloodshed...
"the country has a long history of religious bloodshed..."
-- from a posting above
What has for decades been described as inter-communal violence, where Muslims kill Christians and Christians kill Muslims, has been nothing of the sort. If one goes back and looks at what actually happens, unprovoked attacks on Christians, including the kind of mass killings that finally caused the Christian Ibo of southern Nigeria to proclaim the independence of Biafra, always begin that absurdly-named "cycle of violence" which is a way to divert attention from the Muslim attacks and persecution, finally, at some point, followed by a Christian response.
The "long history of religious bloodshed" is actually the history of Muslim conquest, Muslim attempts to push the Christans, who are more industrious and entrepreneurial, around. In 1804 the Sokoto Jihad was declared, and essentially, Jihad is what has simmered ever since. In his Ahiara Declaration of 1969, Col. Ojukwu did not idly refer to the "Jihad" that had been waged against the Christian Ibo (and other tribes as well) that had led to the Biafran independence movement. Since the crushing of free Biafra, in large part because the Muslim-led army was ruthless, and still more ruthless were the Egyptian pilots who strafed Ibo villages and killed tens of thousands of helpelss villagers, while the entire Western world (with the exception of Israel) was distinctly unfriendly to the Ibo, preferring for some reason to keep repeating that Nigeria had to be "held together" (why? why should large numbers of people, distinct in almost every way, be forced to live in the same nation-state with other people who are not merely different, but murderously aggressive toward them, and willing to exploit the resources of the country to retain their supremacy?).
One rarely pays too much attention to Nigeria. Oh, there was some publicity given to the Miss World contest that was such a source of pride, until Muslim protests forced it to be moved out of Nigeria. There was that Nigerian female journalist who had to escape to England after receiving death threats from Muslims. There was, is, the re-emergence of polio as a threat not only in Nigeria but elsewhere in Africa, traced directly to the conspiracy theories of Nigerian Muslim clerics who apparently believe that the polio vaccine is an Infidel plot to "sterilize Muslims" -- a little projecting here.
Biafra's day may come again. It should, and when it does, this time the Western world should not only not turn its back, afraid to lose oil revenues or to incur the wrath of the Muslims, but help Biafra with military aid and diplomatic support. And if those Egyptian pilots or other Arab or Muslim pilots appear in the sky, then Western pilots should be there to unhestitatingly shoot them down. A free Christian Biafra, possessing the oil wealth, would inspire other black Christians and would do much to reverse any gains Islam may have made because of the "Islam-is-on-the-march" idea.
Very slight proviso to what you have said about who pays attention to Nigeria these days. There was a bit of a flap when they executed a few people who were protesting the development activities of the petroleum industry in one of the provinces. I'm thinking, in particular, of Ken Sarro Wiwa (excuse the spelling) whose son now writes the usual "anti-imperialist" op-ed stuff in the (Toronto) Globe & Mail.
Heard at the front door of the U.S. Nigerian Embassy.
KNOCK-KNOCK.
Who's there?
ALLAH.
"Allah", who?
ALLAH WANT TO DO IS BLOW YOU ALL UP!.
(After a long, skeptical pause, from behind the unopening door came a concluding quip:)
Sorry, we gave at the orifice.