Many football fans in Adamawa State would be deprived of the Brazil 2014 World Cup action, as the state authorities have ordered the closure of all venues planning to screen live coverage of the football World Cup.
The announcement was made on Thursday, obviously because of the current security challenges in Nigeria. The state authorities though, claimed to have received intelligence of planned bomb attacks during the competition.
“Our action is not to stop Nigerians… watching the World Cup. It is to protect their lives,” Brig-Gen Nicholas Rogers said on Wednesday in Yola, the state capital.
Football viewing centres, where people pay to watch live football, are popular throughout Nigeria. However, these centres have been targeted by the dreaded Islamist sect, Boko Haram especially during or following high profile matches.
On 1st June at least 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar that was screening a televised football match in the state.
Also on 24th May, a viewing centres in Jos, Plateau state, filled to the brim with football fans watching the Champions League final match between Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid, was bombed. Several people were killed. No group claimed responsibility for the blast, but Boko Haram were the main suspects.
Adamawa State is one of three in Nigeria that have been placed under emergency rule because of the Boko Haram insurgency.
Many people were also killed in two explosions blamed on Boko Haram while watching football in a video hall in the north-eastern town of Maiduguri in March.
Correspondents say many fans have no means other than the viewing centres to watch the Nigerian team ―or Super Eagles ― in action.
The team is tipped by pundits to be one of Africa’s star performers at the World Cup.
On Thursday the British government is due to host a ministerial meeting in London about northern Nigeria’s security, following on from a summit in Paris last month in which the best ways to subdue the Boko Haram militant group were discussed.
The Nigerian team’s first World Cup match in Brazil is against Iran on 16th June.
They then play Bosnia-Herzegovina and finish their Group F campaign against Argentina as they attempt to reach the last 16, as they did in 1994 and 1998.
