ABUJA,
Nigeria — A man tried to smuggle hand grenades and rifle ammunition
into Nigeria’s Information
Ministry where ministers were attending a
news conference Monday, witnesses and authorities said.
The man apparently made it past the gate of the Radio House compound
in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, heading toward where the ministers were
meeting before being stopped. Footage aired on the state-run Nigerian
Television Authority showed the man sitting on the ground next to a
woman’s handbag that contained the rifle rounds and the grenades.
As journalists shouted questions at the man after his arrest, he said
that he had come from a neighboring state and was trying to give the
bag to someone else inside the ongoing ministerial conference. The
conference, aired live on state television Monday, continued
uninterrupted.
Local police spokesman Jimoh Moshood declined to immediately comment.
A federal police spokesman did not answer a call for comment.
Nigeria has been under increasing attack by a radical Islamist sect
known as Boko Haram, which has been blamed for more than 520 killings
this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. Nigeria’s
capital also has been targeted in bombings carried out by militants from
the country’s oil-rich southern delta.
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