But AFP has seen photographs of the scene showing a destroyed car plus damage to surrounding vehicles, which the British Army's former head of bomb disposal said left no doubt as to the cause.
"This was definitely an incident involving the use of high explosives," Bob Seddon, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and a specialist in improvised explosive devices (IEDs), told AFP in an email exchange after reviewing the images.
"The type of blast effects and fragmentation pattern you would get from a gas explosion are quite different," the former Royal Logistics Corps colonel said, assessing that 25-50 kilos (55-110 pounds) of improvised high explosive were used.
Senior foreign diplomats also indicated privately that the blast was deliberate, attributing the official denials to fears over the potential effects of a confirmed first attack on Lagos, which drives the country's economy.
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