Nigeria is to hold its next presidential election on February 14, 2015, the electoral agency said Friday, with incumbent head of state Goodluck Jonathan expected to seek a second term.

"The commission has scheduled the presidential and National Assembly elections for 14th February 2015," the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said in a statement.

Rescue workers are searching for three people missing after two boats collided in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos, emergency services said Friday.

One of the boats capsized with 10 people on board after the collision late Thursday, Ibrahim Farinloye of the National Emergency Agency told Agence France Presse, adding seven were rescued.

Thousands of people have fled across Nigeria's borders with Cameroon and Niger amid renewed clashes between the Nigerian military and Boko Haram insurgents, the U.N.'s refugee agency said Friday.

Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said that 4,000 people had fled to Cameroon since mid-January, and 1,500 to Niger.

An angry mob attacked seven men suspected of breaking Islamic law banning homosexuality after a court hearing in northern Nigeria, a court official said on Thursday.

"As soon as the suspects emerged from the courtroom to get into the waiting prison van, a crowd of people in their hundreds began hurling stones and insults," Abdul Mohammed told Agence France Presse.

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen shot dead a teacher in a northeast Nigerian village on the border with Chad, police and residents said on Tuesday.

The attackers stormed a house late on Monday, where the head of a primary school lived, killing him and wounding another man, his housemate who was a cook in another school, locals said.

Nigeria's top military officer on Monday called for a swift end to the Islamist insurgency gripping the country's north, as he was sworn in as the new chief of defense staff.

"The security situation in the northeast must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014," Air Marshall Alex Badeh said after his investiture ceremony in the capital, Abuja.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday announced the resignation of the chairman of his ruling party, under pressure from relentless criticism and the weakening of his political power base.

Jonathan told the national executive committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that Bamanga Tukur had stepped down, seen as a move to try to calm competing factions and heal divisions.

A deadly car bomb attack on a crowded market in northeast Nigeria has raised questions about Boko Haram's capacity to strike urban centers, despite military claims to have the militants on the run.

Nineteen people were killed in the strike in the capital of Borno state, Maiduguri, on Tuesday, which came after suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed five in a village near the city on Saturday.

A total of 19 people were killed in a car bomb attack on a busy market blamed on Boko Haram militants, police in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, said on Wednesday.

"From the latest tally at our disposal, the death toll stands at 19," Lawan Tanko, the police commissioner of Borno state, of which Maiduguri is the capital, told AFP.

Nigeria's military on Tuesday blamed Boko Haram militants for a deadly bomb attack that killed at least 17 in a crowded market in Maiduguri, in the latest violence to hit the country's restive north.

Army spokesman Muhammad Dole said a Honda car laden with explosives detonated near the post office in the northeastern city, which was packed with people marking the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed.