Bombs explode as Friday prayers begin at Grand Mosque where emir has spoken out against Boko Haram

There were scenes of chaos in the centre of northern Nigeria’s main city, Kano, on Friday after three bombs exploded and armed gunmen rampaged through the central mosque.

The attack, which bore the hallmarks of Islamists Boko Haram, left dozens of worshippers dead and 126 injured, rescue officials told AFP.

A bomb exploded in the Grand Mosque, one of the country’s biggest, at the close of the crowded Friday sermon. Two others detonated at the gates of the adjoining palace, the home of the emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who recently spoke out against Boko Haram at a sermon in the Grand Mosque.

At least three gunmen fired into the terrified crowds before security officials arrived, witnesses said. “After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the casualties because we all ran away,” a palace staff member told Reuters.

But, in a sign of how growing insecurity in the runup to next year’s general election has stoked tensions, the crowd turned on police and threw stones as they accused them of failing to protect civilians.

“We are frustrated because it is as if we are not safe anywhere in Nigeria any more,” one worshipper, Bello, told the Guardian.

Police opened fire to disperse the people but killed several others in the process, according to witness Mohammed Gwadabe – including two of his neighbours.

More than 3,000 people have been killed and a million displaced this year by Boko Haram. The Islamists say they are fighting to carve out an Islamic state in religiously mixed Nigeria, but their victims are Muslims as frequently as Christians.

This month, Sanusi preached a sermon at the Grand Mosque in which he urged northerners to fight back against Boko Haram and cast doubt on the military’s ability to protect civilians against the Islamists. “These people, when they attack towns, they kill boys and enslave girls … People must stand resolute. They should acquire what they can to defend themselves. People must not wait for soldiers to protect them.”

A security source said a group of civilian vigilantes had alerted the police to a bomb planted in a busy market in Maiduguri, the capital of north-eastern Borno state 370 miles from Kano, earlier yesterday. The bomb was successfully defused shortly before the Kano explosions, he said. At least 30 people were killed by a suicide bomb in the city earlier this week.

Boko Haram regards the traditional Islamic religious authorities in Nigeria with disdain and has killed several clerics it disapproves of. The militants have attempted to assassinate Sanusi’s predecessor and, earlier this year, killed another traditional ruler, the 72-year-old emir of Gwoza.

The group’s’ attacks have mainly been concentrated in its north-eastern base. A renewed military operation last year pushed the group into the hinterlands, from where it began carrying out raids on remote villages, including Chibok where 249 girls were kidnapped in May.

But Kano, the bustling cosmopolitan hub of the north, has been repeatedly attacked. Earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed six people, including three police officers. A suicide bomb attack on a college killed 17 students in September.

The emir of Kano

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga /EPA

In a country where godfathers and rich backers shape politics, Sanusi has often said being a prince enabled him to speak his mind freely. The former central bank chief-turned-whistleblower was born to northern Nigeria’s Fulani royal family, making him an heir apparent to the emir of Kano, the second most powerful Muslim monarchy in the nation home to Africa’s biggest Muslim population.

After serving as one of Africa’s most respected central bankers, he swapped business suits for a royal rawani (turban) this June, ascending the throne of one of West Africa’s oldest and grandest former Islamic empires.

In the mid 1990s, Sanusi quit a highly-paid banking job in order to take up Arabic and Islamic studies in Sudan. He returned to Nigeria and first made waves by wading into a debate over the introduction of sharia law in 12 Muslim majority states. Sanusi wrote a series of newspaper articles arguing against sharia, an issue which he saw as derailing the more urgent challenge of poverty and corruption.

His modernist outlook puts him directly in the firing line of Boko Haram, who claim to be fighting to impose a caliphate ruled by their hardline interpretation of sharia law.

The same outspokenness marked his five-year tenure as central bank chief. With a penchant for pinstripe suits and red bow ties, his tendency to speak his mind earned him fans, ruffled elite feathers and ultimately cost him his position.

Monetary policy meetings in which he decried wasteful government spending culminated in a graft probe that found the state-run oil company had plundered $20bn (£13bn). The ensuing very public spat between Sanusi and president Goodluck Jonathan led to him being axed from the job in February.

“If you’re a prince, you don’t have fear of power. You are not intimidated by authority because you’ve grown up around it,” Sanusi told Reuters at the time.

Since being crowned in June, he faces a new enemy. While some Muslim leaders occasionally hold prayers for peace, few risk referencing Boko Haram directly.

Neither Boko Haram’s slayings of other religious rulers nor the attempted assassination of Sanusi’s predecessor appear to have dampened his determination to speak out. He has begun holding weekly sermons at the Grand Mosque, where last week he urged northerners to take up arms against Boko Haram.

In Friday’s attack, the enemy responded in their signature blood-soaked style. And while Sanusi is unlikely to be fazed, the high death toll will remind him that ordinary civilians are trapped between two powerful forces.