Overnight attacks by Boko Haram Islamists forced authorities on Monday to impose a 24-hour curfew in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, closing the airport and shutting roads into and out of the city.

The government in Borno state said the decision was taken after consultation with the military, which is believed to have been the target of the strikes by hundreds of militant fighters.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's party has finished second in a state election seen as a test of his popularity and opposition strength, the country's electoral watchdog said on Sunday.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said on its website that Jonathan's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) received 97,700 votes in the race for a new governor in southeastern Anambra state, while the main opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) was just behind with 95,963 votes.

Suspected Boko Haram militants killed 24 people in two separate attacks in northern Nigeria, eyewitnesses said on Saturday, just as the military vowed to ramp up security over Christmas.

Seven fishermen were ambushed and killed in the first attack in Baga, a fishing community on Lake Chad in Borno state, one of three in the northeast of the country under emergency rule since May this year.

Nigeria on Saturday pledged to secure communities near its northern and eastern borders with Chad, Niger and Cameroon over Christmas and New Year due to fears about Boko Haram strikes.

The banned Islamist group has previously launched deadly attacks on and around the Christian festival. A wave of attacks against churches and police on December 25, 2011, left 49 people dead.

Air strikes on Boko Haram camps in northeast Nigeria have killed "many" insurgents, the military said Thursday of latest operation aimed at crushing the four-year Islamist uprising.

The bombardment last Sunday targeted the notorious Sambisa Forest area of Borno state, which is considered an extremist fiefdom and has become a key focus of the military's ongoing offensive.

Police enforcing Islamic law in Nigeria's city of Kano publicly destroyed some 240,000 bottles of beer on Wednesday, the latest move in a wider crackdown on behavior deemed "immoral" in the area.

The banned booze had been confiscated from trucks coming into the city in recent weeks, said officials from the Hisbah, the patrol tasked with enforcing the strict Islamic law, known as sharia.

Nigeria's ruling party said on Wednesday that it was unfazed by the defection of powerful state governors to the main opposition, despite it tipping the balance of power in the run-up to elections in 2015.

Seven governors first broke with President Goodluck Jonathan's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in August this year, largely in opposition to his expected bid for re-election in about 18 months' time.

Ethiopia has flown home over 50,000 citizens in Saudi Arabia after a crackdown against illegal immigrants in the oil-rich state, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

"We projected the initial number to be 10,000 but it is increasing," foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told Agence France Presse, adding that the final total once the mass airlift ends is now expected to be around 80,000.

A group of Nigerian state governors who defected from the ruling party on Tuesday joined a new opposition mega-party, officials said, in the latest political blow to President Goodluck Jonathan.

Jonathan's Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has controlled the federal government since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 but is facing unprecedented divisions ahead of general elections in 2015.

Gunmen in central Nigeria's Plateau state killed 37 people in a pre-dawn raid Tuesday, the military said, the latest unrest to hit the area gripped by a decade-long sectarian conflict.

"At about 2:00 am (0100 GMT) unknown gunmen carried out an attack" in four villages, said area military spokesman Salisu Mustapha.