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ON GUARD: Nigerian police

A CROWD in Nigeria beat and set alight to teenage girl who they suspected of being a suicide bomber.

A second suspect, also a teenage girl, was detained and arrested at Muda Lawal, the biggest market in the city of Bauchi.

The two girls aroused suspicion by refusing to be searched when they arrived at the gates of the vegetable market, said a yam seller, Muhammed Adamu.

The crowd is believed to have overpowered one girl and discovered she had two bottles strapped to her body, he said. He said the angry mob clubbed her to death, put a tire doused in fuel over her head and set it on fire.

Police deputy superintendent Muhammad Haruna expressed doubts that the girl was a bomber calling to question why she hadn’t detonated any explosives after being apprehended by the mob. He said she was the victim of action carried out by an “irate crowd”.

Following a series of market-based bombings in Northern Nigeria with young females as young as ten as the perpetrators, tensions in the state have been at a high in the lead up to the Presidential elections.

Islamic extremists Boko Haram have claimed responsibility for these attacks generating fear that the girls used are from the abducted Chibok girls.

The group stands in opposition to Western education and democracy with a crusade that has claimed close to 10,000 lives last year alone.

President Goodluck Jonathan last week condemned the extremists for choosing “soft targets” and said the series of bombings were a response to the Nigerian military’s recent success in seizing back several towns that had been in the hands of the group for months.

The Nigerian Presidential election is scheduled for March 28 after being postponed from February 14 due to security fears.