As the muffled boom of a distant bomb set off by militants gives way seconds later to the clatter of government soldiers’ automatic gunfire, Satu Mari listens in the car park of the hotel he owns in Maiduguri, a city in Nigeria’s turbulent north-east. “Bomb is our daily bread,” he says casually. “Bomb is our good morning and good night.” Maiduguri is sliding towards a full-blown guerrilla war and Mr Mari runs one of the few businesses with a bright future. He lodges army officers.

The government is sending thousands of troops to Nigeria’s north to fight Islamist militants said to have emerged from a small cult in the past decade. Known as Boko Haram, it is blamed for nearly every act of violence now occurring in Africa’s most populous nation, some 160m-strong. After a wave of attacks on banks and prisons in late 2010, the militants are said to have moved up a notch, murdering politicians and poll workers in the run-up to elections in March and April last year. They are also blamed for bombs that went off at the heavily guarded national police headquarters and at the offices of the UN in the capital, Abuja. And for the second year in a row Boko Haram is said to have attacked Christmas church services.

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