Walking with wooden crutches because polio robbed him of the use of his legs, Aminu Ahmed Tudun-Wada is determined to prevent superstition and misinformation crippling efforts to vaccinate against the disease.

"If the West wanted to kill you, it doesn't have to be through polio (immunization)," said the 53-year-old head of a polio victims' association in the Nigerian state of Kano.

Gunmen on motorcycles have shot dead five people and injured several others in northeast Nigeria, the latest attack in the restive region, police said Saturday.

"Five people were killed in the attack on a group of people playing cards by gunmen riding on a motorcycle," said the police commissioner in Gombe state, Mohammed Sule.

Attackers in Nigeria including some dressed as soldiers have killed 10 members of the same family with half of the victims under the age of six, an official in central Plateau state said Friday.

"The attack was in the night around 8:00 pm (1900 GMT Thursday) where a family of 10 were completely murdered," the governor's spokesman Pam Ayuba told Agence France Presse, adding that some of the attackers wore military uniforms.

Nigerian security forces were in a "massive manhunt" Friday for seven members of a kidnapped French family after Paris said the abductors had likely separated the victims into two groups.

"As long as there are rumors of their cross-border movements, then security agencies must be intensely searching for them," police spokesman Frank Mba told Agence France Presse, adding that there was a "massive manhunt."

Nigerian security forces searched the country's northeast along the border with Cameroon on Thursday in a bid to free a French family kidnapped earlier this week, officials said.

"Intelligence reports have shown that the abductors may be holding their victims ... around the Dikwa area," a security official in the region said on condition of anonymity.

Nigerian secret police on Wednesday paraded a 50-year-old Islamic cleric and two accomplices who they alleged were spying on prominent individuals and targets in the west African nation for Iran.

Abdullahi Mustapha Berende, presented as a leader of the Shiite sect in the central city of Ilorin, was arrested last December "for his active involvement in espionage and terrorist activities," state security service spokeswoman Marilyn Ogar said.

A blast targeting a military patrol vehicle in the Nigerian city where a radical Islamist group is based killed two civilians on Wednesday, the military said.

"An improvised explosive device targeting (a military) patrol team exploded at (the) post office roundabout in Maiduguri," Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa said in a statement.

Armed pirates who stormed an oil service ship in southern Nigeria have kidnapped six foreigners and demanded a $1.3 million ransom for their release, police told Agence France Presse.

"Three of those abducted are from Ukraine, two from India, one from Russia," Bayelsa state police spokesman Fidelis Odunna said of the Sunday attack.

France on Wednesday urged its citizens to leave northern Cameroon after seven members of a French family were seized in a kidnapping officials suspect was carried out by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram.

The family -- a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle -- were snatched in northern Cameroon by six gunmen on three motorbikes on Tuesday and officials said they had been taken across the border into Nigeria.

Nigeria on Tuesday charged 15 Russian sailors detained since October with illegally bringing weapons into the west African nation that is awash with black-market fire arms.

The crew of the MV Myre Seadiver were temporarily denied bail by Lagos High Court Judge Okechukwu Okeke, with a final ruling on the bail application set for February 25.