Authorities in Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Adamawa have ordered all venues planning to screen live coverage of the football World Cup to close.
They say they have received intelligence of planned bomb attacks during the competition, which opens in Brazil on Thursday.
Adamawa is one of the states badly affected by Islamist violence. Open-air viewing centres – where people pay to watch live football – are popular throughout Nigeria.
“Our action is not to stop Nigerians… watching the World Cup. It is to protect their lives,” Brig-Gen Nicholas Rogers was quoted by the AFP agency as saying on Wednesday in Yola, the capital of Adamawa.