President Barack Obama authorized the mission by SEAL Team 6 two days earlier, deploying the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden last year. Minutes after the president gave his State of the Union address to Congress he was on the phone with the American’s father to tell him his daughter was safe.

The move came a day after gunmen stormed a police station in Nigeria’s second city of Kano, the latest raid blamed on the Islamist group Boko Haram, which is accused of killing more than 250 people this year alone.

President Goodluck Jonathan appointed Mohammed D. Abubakar to replace Hafiz Ringim “as a first step towards the comprehensive reorganisation and repositioning of the Nigeria police force to make it more effective and capable of meeting emerging internal security challenges,” said a statement.

Hafiz, who was police chief for less than a year, faced scathing criticism after suspected Boko Haram member Kabiru Sokoto escaped police custody last week while being transferred to a police station near the capital Abuja.

The statement said Jonathan had also approved the “retirement” of six deputy police chiefs with immediate effect.

Jonathan also appointed a committee “to oversee the urgent reorganisation” of the force and to look into the reasons behind “the collapse in public confidence of the police”.

Critics say Nigeria’s police have done too little to stop the spate of increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks that have hit several areas of northern Nigeria in recent weeks.

In an opinion piece published Wednesday before the sackings, Nigeria’s Punch daily urged Jonathan to “overhaul his security apparatus,” and accused the government of “incompetence” in dealing with the Islamist threat.

Amnesty International on Tuesday also denounced “serious criminal justice failings” in the handling of the Boko Haram menace, and pointed to poorly trained and ill-equipped policemen.

In the Islamist group’s deadliest onslaught yet, at least 185 people were killed on Friday in a wave of coordinated gun and bomb that mostly targetted police stations in the mainly Muslim northern city of Kano.

And on Tuesday, gunmen attacked a Kano police station with bombs and gunfire, killing one woman, witnesses said.

The station, in a densely populated area, was severely damaged: its windows were shattered, the walls were smoke-stained and blood had covered nearly the entire bathroom floor, according to AFP reporters.

“A policeman was shot in the leg. A woman who came to see a policeman was shot in the stomach. She died,” a resident who requested anonymity told AFP.

Boko Haram has said it wants to create an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, and some believe the group has Al-Qaeda ties.

Mali’s Foreign Minister Boubeye Maiga said Tuesday there was a “confirmed link” between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda’s North Africa franchise, at a security meeting of Sahel states in Mauritania also attended by Nigeria.

At checkpoints set up across Kano on Wednesday, security forces were stopping vehicles and ordering drivers to open their car boots for inspection.

The army was manning checkpoints in the Christian neighbourhood of Sabon Gari, while the local police were in charge elsewhere, AFP correspondents said.

Security forces have also imposed a strict sundown curfew across the city.

According to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram has killed more than 935 people since the group — whose name can be loosely translated as “Western education is sin” — launched a violent campaign in July 2009.

More than 250 of those deaths have come in 2012 alone.

Jonathan is having to confront the worst crises of his nine-month tenure — the surge in Boko Haram attacks and mounting social discontent.

Military spokesman Colonel Mohammed Yerima said Wednesday that troops had withdrawn from the streets of the commercial capital Lagos following a public outcry over their deployment in the wake of mass fuel protests.

Jonathan set off the protests when he abolished fuel subsidies on January 1, causing petrol prices to more than double.

Ahmed Osman struck early in each half for the Libyans on a barely playable Estadio de Bata pitch, but his goals were cancelled out as Emmanuel Mayuka and captain Christopher Katongo netted.

The result means pre-tournament 125/1 rank outsiders and co-hosts Equatorial Guinea will become the first team to reach the quarter-finals if they defeat Senegal in the second half of a double-header.

Libya, whose players risked their lives to fulfil qualifying fixtures while a civil war raged in the north African country, retained a mathematical chance of making the last eight.

The kick-off of the first second-round group fixture was delayed 76 minutes after torrential late-afternoon rain dotted the pitch at the 35,000-seat stadium with mini lakes.

Efforts to clear puddles of varying sizes included the use of brooms, long and short planks of wood and the belated appearance of a machine which speeded up the process.

However, it was questionable whether the game should have gone ahead with a large area of the pitch near the touchline in front of the main stand a muddy, waterlogged mess.

Katongo questioned the decision to stage the game.

“It wasn’t easy and I’m quite disappointed the referee took this decision. It was only in the middle of the pitch that we could play a bit, everywhere else it was ping-pong, and we don’t know how to play ping-pong,” he said.

“Our game is on the ground, and the ball wouldn’t move. We did what we could – the ref made a decision, a human being can make a mistake.”

Libya’s Brazilian coach Marcos Paqueta said: “It was hard for both teams to play in these conditions.

“I think the result was deserved. We were up against a very good Zambia side, the group favourites. We still have a chance to qualify.”

Libya’s captain and goalkeeper Samir Abod added: “The conditions were very difficult, it was hard to control the ball.

“Given the state of the pitch the coach issued instructions based on playing the ball long.”

Walid El Khatroushi, who quit football temporarily last year to fight for the rebels who toppled Moamer Kadhafi, created the fifth-minute opening goal with a slide rule pass and Osman beat onrushing goalkeeper Kennedy Mweene to score.

Forced to retire injured in the loss to Equatorial Guinea last weekend, midfielder El Khatroushi was out of luck again midway through the first half with Ihab El Busaifi taking his place.

Fast-footed Zambia were not finding the heavy conditions to their liking against more direct opponents, but they gradually took command and it was no surprise when they levelled just before the half-hour mark.

Rainford Kalaba floated a superb cross to the far post where Mayuka hooked the ball across 39-year-old Abod into the far corner of the net.

Osman struck again two minutes after half-time, showing excellent control inside the six-yard box to score with a shot that went in off a post after Zambia failed to clear a low El Busaifi cross.

No Zambian heads dropped, though, and they equalised again after 54 minutes when a cross and a bicycle kick set up unmarked captain Katongo to nod home at the far post.

The International Monetary Fund in December highlighted the discrepancy, which amounts to one quarter of Angola’s gross domestic product.

“The government has and is making a very concerted effort to improve the transparency and the coverage of its fiscal accounts as well as the monitoring and reconciliation of the timely transfer of oil revenues,” Nicholas Staines, the IMF’s representative in Luanda told AFP.

The discrepancy appeared to come from undocumented spending on big-ticket projects like housing developments and railway renovations, which were undertaken by the state oil firm Sonangol, he said.

“These expenditures, or operations, or payments were not documented to the fiscal authorities, to the minister of finance with supporting documentary evidence, and therefore not included in the fiscal accounts,” he said.

He said the money was not “missing” but that Angola had long-running problems with its accounting.

US-based lobby Human Rights Watch has drawn attention to the discrepancy, known in accounting terms as a residual, and called on Angola to publicly disclose its efforts to trace the money

Luanda reacted angrily to the allegations that the money was missing, denying the claims in a front-page story in the government mouthpiece Jornal de Angola.

The latest IMF mission to Angola wrapped up on Saturday. The mission said in a report that “important measures have been adopted to ensure that oil revenues are transferred to the Treasury in a predictable and timely manner.”

In particular, a recent presidential decree requires Sonangol this year to phase out many of the operations that would normally be performed by government.

Angola has so far received $1.2 billion under an IMF programme extended in 2009 to help plug liquidity gaps following a fall in the price of oil, the country’s main export.

Sonangol, sometimes described as a parallel structure of government, holds the concessions for Angola’s vast oil blocks, is in charge of downstream distribution and has extensive overseas and domestic investment portfolios.

It also runs its own airline, manages government housing and industrial programmes, and through joint ventures with Chinese companies is involved in negotiating oil-backed loans for the government.

Suspected members of Boko Haram surrounded the police station Tuesday night in Kano, ordered civilians to get off the street, began chanting “God is great” and threw homemade bombs into the station while spraying it with assault rifles, witnesses said. The attack followed coordinated assaults on Friday that killed at least 185 people in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city.

Associated Press journalists on Wednesday saw that youths had overrun the bombed-out station in the Sheka neighborhood of this sprawling city in northern Nigeria.

Doors to jail cells stood open. Blood coated the floor of the local commander’s private bathroom. Investigative files that had apparently been rifled through were spilled on the floors. Cheering youths outside waved an officer’s uniform and jumped up and down on top of a burned-out police truck, with one wearing a police ballistic helmet, smiling.

Others in the crowd said in the local Hausa language they would kill any police officer who returned. Some ominously asked journalists visiting the site if they were Christians.

“We are not satisfied with what is happening now,” said 26-year-old Abubakar Muawuya. Our leaders “have to call this Boko Haram and sit down with them.”

Kano state police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though it followed the pattern of others carried out by Boko Haram, including the use of improvised explosives.

The sect, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in Hausa, has claimed responsibility for Friday coordinated attacks in Kano.

Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.

On Wednesday, Niger’s foreign minister said the sect received training and weapons from al-Qaida’s North African wing.

Mohamed Bazoum said in Mauritania’s capital that members of Boko Haram have had training and received explosives from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

“There is no doubt the two organizations are connected and that they have the same objective of destabilizing our region,” he said.

Ministers from the West African region met Wednesday in Mauritania, and vowed to intensify their efforts against the groups.

While Boko Haram has begun targeting Christians in the north, most of those killed Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.

Nigeria’s weak and corruption-riddled central government has been unable to stop Boko Haram’s increasingly bloody attacks.

Nigeria is an oil-rich nation but most Nigerians don’t see the benefits and earn less than $2 a day. They have to contend with a rotting infrastructure like bad roads and a lack of electrical power, and seeming government indifference to the problems. The level of anger is high as democracy in a nation with a history of military rule has failed to markedly improve people’s lives.

When President Goodluck Jonathan on Jan. 1 ended a fuel subsidy that kept prices at the pump low, unions launched a nationwide strike and streets of cities filled with protesters, forcing the president to partially reinstate the subsidy.

“We have begun a three-day strike to demand notably a decrease in fuel prices, a halt to harassment and social protection. Adherence is at 95 percent in Dakar and 100 percent in the interior,” said Aliou Soum, a leader of the National Union of Senegalese Road Transporters.

However some unions were not following the strike as many people were travelling to different religious centres around the country ahead of the Maouloud religious holiday celebrating the birth of the prophet Mohammed on February 4.

In the usually traffic-clogged capital Dakar, cars flowed smoothly without the thousands of yellow taxis typically in circulation. A few minibuses and taxis could be seen but many people waited in vain for transport, an AFP journalist reported.

Earlier this month a two-day public transport strike saw people resort to horse-drawn carts to get around, and those who did not follow the strike were forced off the road.

Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom on Tuesday warned against violence saying “no hindrance, passive or violent, will be tolerated as others exercise their right to carry out their normal work.”