'We saw bomber before blast' - Traders

Traders at Banez Plaza, who disclosed that they had noticed the strange movement of the suspect before the blast, regretted not reporting him to security agents.
Two traders who identified themselves as Ifeanyi Eze and Ndubuisi Emeka, salesmen in two of the shops, said they saw the bomber with a strange bag going from one shop to the other in the plaza but didn’t inform security personnel at the plaza because they never envisaged he could do such a terrible thing.

“Although we alerted some of the private security men but they could not do anything much when they discovered he was highly intoxicated. They did not search the bag he was holding but they asked him some questions.

“When he told them he was a personnel of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp just posted to the area, he was allowed to go even though they did not ask for his identification card,” Ifeanyi said.

He added that the private security men could not do much to the suspected bomber when they found out at the time of search that he had huge sums of money in his pocket.