Maiduguri, Nigeria - A rash of mysterious killings and an audacious prison break in northern Nigeria appear to be an outright challenge to the government, a political observer says.
Nigeria specialist Paul Lubeck of the University of California at Santa Cruz told the New York Times he would classify recent events in the country "an actual insurrection."
"The attack on the Bauchi prison is much more sophisticated than anything that's been seen. They're drawing, for cannon fire, on massive poverty," Lubeck said.
Eleven people have been gunned down in Maiduguri since July, police said, in a series of killings by men on motorcycles wielding Kalashnikov rifles.
The bold daylight attacks have prompted officials to say a radical Islamic sect, once thought to have been crushed by government troops, has been revived.
Last month 700 prisoners, including many members of the sect, were freed from Bauchi prison in a twilight break.