At least 100 people were killed in weekend attacks on three villages in central Nigeria, local officials said Sunday.

"We have at least 100 dead bodies from the three villages attacked by the gunmen" overnight Friday-Saturday, Yakubu Bitiyong, a lawmaker at the Kaduna state parliament, told Agence France Presse.

At least seven people were killed and dozens injured in Nigeria's capital after thousands of panicked job-seekers stampeded during a government recruitment drive in the national stadium on Saturday.

Survivors told AFP that thousands had gathered to apply for jobs with the immigration department in the Abuja stadium.

Boko Haram Islamists attacked a military base in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Friday and freed dozens of insurgents from custody, the military said of the latest raid in the embattled city.

Before storming the Giwa barracks, a notorious prison for Islamist fighters, the gunmen opened fire in a residential neighborhood and razed many homes, witnesses said.

Gunmen on motorbikes in northwest Nigeria's Katsina state killed at least 69 people and torched several homes in attacks on four villages, a local lawmaker told Agence France Presse Thursday, amid rising communal tension in the region.

The state's police chief, Hurdi Mohammed, who gave a lower toll of 30 dead, told AFP the violence was perpetrated by ethnic Fulani herdsmen who have been blamed for scores of deadly raids.

East African heads of state met in Addis Ababa Thursday in the latest push for peace in war-torn South Sudan, where almost three months of raging conflict has left thousands dead.

Leaders from the East African bloc, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), were hosted by Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to "deliberate on the current situation" in the troubled fledgling nation, a statement read.

Gunmen in restive central Nigeria opened fire on the convoy of the governor of Benue state but no one was hurt in the incident, police said Wednesday.

Benue falls in Nigeria's so-called "Middle Belt" which divides the mainly Christian south and mostly Muslim north in Africa's most populous country.

Thousands of refugees are fleeing harrowing scenes of atrocities and body-strewn streets in northern Nigeria, the U.N. said Tuesday.

The U.N.'s refugee agency said violence in the area had prompted some 2,000 people to flee into neighboring Niger over the past four weeks alone.

Nigeria's main opposition party has unveiled what it hopes will be a blueprint for winning power when voters in Africa's most populous nation go to the polls to elect a new president and parliament.

The All Progressives Congress (APC), buoyed by a wave of defections from President Goodluck Jonathan's ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), called the manifesto a "Road Map to a New Nigeria".

Nigeria's military said on Thursday that it had killed 20 Islamist insurgents in the restive northeast, as schools were shut in the region to prevent further attacks targeting students.

Defence spokesman Chris Olukolade said troops repelled an ambush by Boko Haram militants on Wednesday in Mafa, Borno state, epicenter of the uprising which has killed 500 people this year alone.

The United States said Wednesday it had ordered a freeze on $458 million in assets hidden in European accounts by former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his conspirators.

The Justice Department said the corruption proceeds -- stashed away in bank accounts in Britain, France and Jersey -- were frozen at Washington's request with the help of local authorities.