By Musdapha Ilo, Maiduguri

The Yobe State police command has denied reports that it arrested a suspect who specialises in making Improvised Explosive Devices for the Boko Haram.

The Yobe State Commissioner of Police, Marcus Kwalati Danladi, who made the denial on Tuesday in Damaturu, the state capital, while speaking to journalists, said the report was false.

AFP, the French newswire service, had reported that a suspected bomb manufacturer and nine accomplices were arrested by the Nigerian security authorities.

Quoting a senior police source, the news agency reported that that the suspected bomb maker named Ba’na, who had been responsible for manufacturing explosives used in a series of Boko Haram suicide attacks, was arrested in Potiskum, Yobe State last Sunday.

The news agency equally reported that the police source who claimed to have been involved in Ba’na’s arrest, disclosed that he was apprehended weeks after he had been under surveillance.

However, reacting to the report on Tuesday, Danladi said no suspected bomb maker was arrested in Potiskum or anywhere else in Yobe State.

“We are doing our best to arrest the situation in the state, but I can tell you know arrest was made of any bomb maker.”

The commissioner stated that he has spoken to the divisional police officer, DPO, in Potiskum who confirmed that no such arrest was ever made.

In the report, the AFP police source had given some details about the arrested suspect, including the fact that he is in his mid-thirties and had confessed making bombs for Boko Haram insurgents.

“He confessed to being responsible for the manufacture of the explosives used in at least three suicide attacks and the car explosion outside the divisional police station,” adding that nine alleged accomplices were also arrested in a hideout in the town hours after Ba’na’s arrest,” the news agency reported.