UN bombing a Nigerian security game changer

A bomb that tore through UN headquarters in Nigeria's capital on Friday has heightened concerns about the risk posed by radical Islamists in Africa's most populous nation.

Although there has been no claim of responsibility, analysts, security forces and diplomats said the attack has all the hallmarks of Boko Haram, a radical group whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden".

Boko Haram has said it was behind almost daily attacks in the remote northeast of Nigeria and a car bombing at police headquarters in Abuja in June.

But a strike on an international target like the UN would mark a rise in its ambitions.

"The switch from targeting the Nigerian security forces to an international target like the UN building certainly changes the complexion of the Boko Haram insurgency, assuming it was actually them," said Peter Sharwood-Smith, Nigeria country manager at risk consultants Drum Cussac.

The group, which mostly operates in the remote dusty northeast, near borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger, wants sharia law more widely applied across Nigeria and has killed more than 150 people this year.

Intelligence officials have said there is evidence to suggest some Boko Haram members have trained in Niger and have connections with al-Qaeda's North African wing, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).

The attack on the UN has increased fears about those links, they said.

In Friday's attack, which killed at least 18 people, a car slammed through security gates of the UN complex, crashed into the basement and exploded, sending vehicles flying and setting the building ablaze.

In June, Boko Haram pulled off a similar strike on police headquarters in Abuja. In both attacks the bombers died but police were not sure the driver in June intended to be killed.

If the attacker at the UN was a suicide bomber, it would be the first ever in Nigeria.

"The scale of the explosion at the UN building suggests that a different method was used, for instance involving military grade explosive such as Semtex, or explosive made from ammonium nitrate," risk forecasting company, Exclusive Analysis, said.

"This would be a clearer indication that training or supply lines have been opened between Boko Haram and AQIM."

The second bomb blast in the capital in as many months will pile pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan, who has failed to bring the growing unrest in the north under control since taking office last year.

He set up a committee last month to look into the unrest in the northeast but the team has delayed delivering its report, while the heavy-handed security forces have done more harm than good, according to local residents and Amnesty International.

Jonathan, the first president from the southern oil-producing Niger Delta, comfortably won an election in April that observers and many Nigerians said was the fairest the country has held since the end of military rule in 1999.

But he did not have everyone's support, particularly in parts of the mainly-Muslim north, who felt it was the turn of a northerner to rule the country.

The insecurity in the north is not helped by a growing sense of economic alienation. Literary and employment rates are far lower and it is generally poorer than the south, where oil and the commercial-hub Lagos provide jobs.

While there is a layer of Boko Haram that is driven by fundamental ideology, many of its members are disillusioned, unemployed youths, who feel abandoned by the state.

Further attacks are stoked by local politicians, hiding under the guise of the sect, in an effort to damage opponents.

Jonathan condemned the UN attack and said it is a reminder of the international character of terrorism. He may need to focus on more home-grown problems.

"(The) election -- and the brutal violence that followed in several northern cities -- exposed the widening gulf between the south and the Hausa-speaking Muslim north," said Ashley Elliot, Africa analyst and Control Risks.

"Political and economic power has shifted south in the last few years. If Jonathan fails to dampen northern fears over marginalization, domestic Islamist militancy originating in the north could become a regular feature on our television screens."