Nigeria Boko Haram terror: Archbishop of Jos says 'poor need protection' after bomb blasts

The archbishop of the city struck by twin bomb blasts has criticised the Nigerian government and called for more to be done to protect the country's poor from such attacks.

Archbishop Ben Kwashi said that those killed in the attacks were mostly poor and helpless and that suspected Islamist militants would not succeed in widening the religious divide in the city between Muslims and Christians.

"Government must step up, to show that it cares about the weak, about the poor, about those who have no means at all in the society," Kwashi told BBC News.

The archbishop's call comes after 31 people were killed when two bombs exploded at a busy market in the northern city of Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

"The bodies recovered so far are 31 but rescue workers are at the scene and the figures may change," said Pam Ayuba, spokesperson for the state's governor Jonah Jang.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident but the Islamist militant group Boko Haram are suspected of conducting the attack.

The terror group have carried out a wave of attacks in northern Nigeria in their quest to establish an Islamic caliphate in similar fashion to that of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

According to Human Rights Watch, Boko Haram militants have killed at least 2,053 people since the beginning of 2014. But researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies estimate 7,000 people have been killed in the 12 months between July 2013 and June this year.

Nigeria's main opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), has continuously accused President Goodluck Jonathan's administration of playing politics with the Boko Haram terror group.

Last month, the party's chairman John Oyegun claimed that West Africa's largest military was intentionally not doing enough to quell the insurgency from Boko Haram and said that the reason behind Abuja's reaction was because the three states affected by the insurgency - Yobe, Adamawa and Borno - were APC heartlands.