The United States has warned its citizens of a plan to attack one of two Sheraton hotels in Nigeria?s commercial city, Lagos.
In a statement on its website, the State Department said those behind the plot were “groups associated with terrorism”, but gave no further details.
The group has never attacked Lagos, although its leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened to do so in one of his video recording last year, in which he also threatened to attack world leaders.
“As of late April, groups associated with terrorism allegedly planned to mount an unspecified attack against the Sheraton Hotel in Nigeria, near the city of Lagos,” the State Department said late on Friday.
“There was no further information regarding which of the two Sheraton?Hotels?in Lagos was the possible target … There is no further information regarding the timing or method of attack.”
It cautioned U.S. citizens to avoid the hotels.
The Abuja bombs, along with the abduction of 200 girls from a school near the Cameroon border, may overshadow the WEF conference which President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has pledged to protect with 6,000 troops casting as one of the most extensive security nets in the history of Africa.
Meanwhile, the United States has offered to help Nigeria, according U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Ethiopia on Saturday.
“The kidnapping of hundreds of children by Boko Haram is an unconscionable crime and we will do everything possible to support the Nigerian government to return these young women to their homes and to hold the perpetrators to justice,” Kerry said, addressing a forum in the capital Addis Ababa.
A senior U.S. State Department official travelling with Kerry described that support to Nigeria as broad-based and said that it included helping the government improve internal coordination within its security sector.
The official said a U.S. team, including from the U.S. military’s Africa Command as well as the State Department, was due to visit Nigeria next week to “consult with them on how we might be helpful” in the fight against the group.
Per Second News gathered that about three years ago the U.S government offered to help Nigeria in the war against terror but the Nigerian authorities rejected their request saying that, ?We are on top of it?.
A source informed Per Second News that the U.S Military has requested for ammunitions seized from some members of the Boko Haram members killed recently in order to know where the arms are coming from, a request that the Nigerian Military is yet to grant, the source said on Sunday.
?Source persecond news
