* Region seen as flashpoint ahead of April polls
* Residents clear streets as security forces patrol
(Adds comment from president)
By Ibrahim Mshelizza
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Gunmen thought to be from a radical Islamist sect shot dead a leading candidate for governor of Nigeria's northeastern state of Borno and six others on Friday, raising fears of more violence ahead of April polls.
Residents deserted the streets after the killings as armed police and soldiers patrolled the city of Maiduguri, which has seen frequent attacks by the Boko Haram sect including an uprising a year and a half ago in which hundreds died.
Modu Fannami Gubio, the candidate in April elections for the All Nigeria People's Party (ANPP), was followed from a mosque after Friday prayers by gunmen on motorbikes and shot with six others as they got out of a jeep outside his home, witnesses said.
The younger brother of state governor Ali Modu Sheriff was also killed in the attack. Sheriff, who is also from the ANPP, is close to the end of his second term as governor of Borno.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who is in Ethiopia for an African Union summit, said he was shocked by the killings.
"The era of do-or-die politics in Nigeria is over, and those who want to take us back to that arbitrary past have no place in renascent Nigeria," his office said in a statement, calling on the security agencies to find those responsible.
Maiduguri is seen as one of the main flashpoints ahead of presidential, parliamentary and state governorship elections in Africa's most populous nation in three months' time.
One senior ANPP official warned privately the government might have to declare a state of emergency in Borno if the violence continued.
Violence has also flared further south in the "Middle Belt" which lies between the mostly Muslim north and largely Christian south, although the clashes have more to do with rivalry for local political and economic power than religion.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said this week more than 200 people had been killed in the region over the past month. [ID:nLDE70Q2IN]
SECT HAD WARNED OF REVENGE
Borno state police commissioner Mohamed Jinjiri Abubakar told Reuters two plain clothes policemen were among the dead in Friday's shootings.
The attack bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, which has been behind months of targeted killings often carried out by gunmen on motorbikes and has warned of revenge against the ANPP for its pledges to tighten security.
Maiduguri sits in one of Nigeria's poorest regions near its northeastern borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger in the Sahel, a strip of savannah on the southern edge of the Sahara desert.
Additional soldiers manned checkpoints set up across the city after the 2009 uprising in which the sect attacked government buildings, leading to gun battles with the security forces in which as many as 800 people died.
Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is sinful", wants sharia (Islamic law) more widely applied across Nigeria.
The vast nation of more than 140 million people is roughly equally divided between Christians and Muslims. Boko Haram's views are not espoused by the vast majority of the Muslim population, the largest in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is unclear how many followers Boko Haram has but poverty, unemployment and a lack of education have meant its leaders have managed to build a cult-like following who are as much violently anti-establishment as fervently religious. (Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Matthew Jones) (For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://af.reuters.com/ )
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