Nigeria: Report Gives Details, Says Terrorist Groups Gaining Foothold in Nigeria

Mu'azu Babangida Aliyu, the governor of Niger State and chairman of the Northern Governors' Forum, also faulted the US Embassy's warning. Aliyu, while playing host to Umar Farouk Bahago, the Emir of Minna, who paid him Sallah homage in the government house, Minna, last week said that such warning only gives the nation a negative image among other nations of the world.

He insisted that such warnings by foreign embassies will not help Nigeria, but would only destroy what the country has gained in its re-branding efforts. "With such kind of comments, the image of the country continues to be tainted," he said.

However, last Tuesday, the US insisted that the plot to bomb Abuja was real. Tina Onufei, public affairs officer of the public affairs section of the US Consulate General in Lagos, told Newswatch that the security alert to American citizens was based on information at its disposal.

She explained that based on the specificity and credibility of the threat, they had no choice but to give their best counsel to their citizens. Onufei explained that the reaction by the Nigerian government denouncing the security alert by the U.S has not any way affected the diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Last Wednesday, the US Embassy relaxed its terror warning. The embassy explained that since it issued the emergency warning, it had continued to monitor closely the threat posed by the sect and had noticed increased security checks by the Nigerian government. It therefore, said that its citizens were no longer instructed to avoid the three hotels but maintain a high level of vigilance.

Intense security surveillance continued to be mounted in strategic locations in Abuja throughout last week after the security alert by the US embassy. The three hotels said to be prime targets of the terror gang received an unusual presence of operatives from the army, police, and the SSS.

The security operatives were positioned in all the entrance and exit gates of the hotels, from where they searched all vehicles and individuals carrying bags and baggage into the hotels. The operatives, who were heavily armed with guns of various shapes and sizes, refused to entertain questions from Newswatch on issues relating to their operations in Abuja.

There was heightened security alert in Abuja and in most public offices, people were moving about but conscious of the security threat. Beyond the hotels, entrances and exit gates at police, SSS and army formations in the federal territory were also heavily guarded by armed security operatives.

Major public buildings such as the International Conference Centre, Radio House, the federal secretariat, the National Assembly and all buildings at the three arms zone, including courts at the had security presence around them beefed up.

The situation was most pronounced at the SSS headquarters building popularly called the Yellow House. The entire frontage of the building, facing the residence of Vice President Namadi Sambo at the Presidential Villa, was barricaded with concrete obstacles, molded in cone shapes of about three feet high.

Only visitors, including journalists on verifiable appointments, were allowed by heavily armed men after thorough body and bag searches into the SSS premises throughout last week. Unlike before, visitors were not allowed to drive in or park their cars near the SSS building. The nearest vehicles were tolerated was at Aso drive, a distance of about a quarter of a kilometer.

The bombing of im Ypbe State has elicited condemnation locally and internationally. Ayo Oritsejafor, national president of CAN lamented the ugly situation where innocent people, who were mostly Christians in the North, were sent to their early graves by members of the Islamic fundamentalist sect.

"The Christian Association of Nigeria is calling on the federal government to demonstrate the political will to deal decisively with the increasing wave of terrorism in the country. Reports reaching me from different parts of the North have shown that several innocent lives have again been sent to their early graves and property worth millions of naira has either been torched or vandalized in another orgy of religious violence," Oritsejafor said.

Nkechi Mba, national president of the National Council of Women's Societies [NCWS], was worried that women were being turned into "widows prematurely, losing their children, loved ones and valuable property due to the violent activities of some unpatriotic Nigerians and their collaborators."

She described the killings of innocent Nigerians as barbaric and unacceptable and urged the government to fish out perpetrators of the act. The NCWS president appealed to Boko Haram to have a rethink, saying that the "country belongs to all of us, and divided we fall, but united we stand, and where there is no peace, there will be no development.

The Arewa Consultative Forum [ACF], the apex socio-cultural organization of the North, also appealed to members of the sect to stop the killings and embrace dialogue for the unity and peace of the country.

Anthony Sani, national publicity secretary of the organization advised members of the sect to forgive the injustices they were fighting against. "It is, therefore, still the position of ACF that the sect should embrace dialogue by shelving further violence. This would address any perceived injustice and bring about peace for national interest and common good," Sani stated.

Ban Ki-Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, described the attacks as "criminal and unjustifiable." He called for "an end to all violence in the area while offering sympathy for the victims."

Pope Benedict XVI also appealed for an end to all violence, saying that it only increases problems, sowing the seeds of hatred and division even among the faithful. He told tourists in St. Peter's Square that he was following with apprehension the news from Nigeria.

Boko Haram which figuratively means "Western or non-Islamic education is a sin," is a Nigerian Islamic fundamentalist group that seeks the imposition of Shariah laws in 12 northern states of Nigeria. The group presently has an undefined structure and chain of command.

The official name of the group is Jama'atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda'awati wal-Jihad, which in Arabic means "People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet's Teachings and Jihad." The literal translation is "Association of Sunnis for the Propagation of Islam and for Holy War."

It became known following sectarian violence in Nigeria in 2009. But residents of Maiduguri, where it was formed in 2002, dubbed it Boko Haram. Loosely translated from the local Hausa language, this means "Western education is forbidden."

Residents gave it the name because of its strong opposition to Western education, which it sees as corrupting Muslims. The term Boko Haram comes from the Hausa word Boko meaning "Animist, western or otherwise non-Islamic education" and the Arabic word Haram figuratively meaning "sin" but literally means "forbidden."

Boko Haram opposes not only western education but also western culture and modern science. The group came into existence in the 1960s but only started to draw attention in 2002. Mohammed Yusuf became its leader in the same year. He then formed Boko Haram in Maiduguri and set up a religious complex, which included a mosque and an Islamic school.

Many poor Muslim families from across Northern Nigeria, as well as neighboring countries, enrolled their children at the school. In 2004, it moved to Kanamma, Yobe State, where it set up a base called "Afghanistan," from where it attacked nearby police stations, killing police officers.

But Boko Haram also had a political goal which is to create an Islamic State and the school became a recruiting ground for jihadists to fight for the state.

In July 2009, the Nigerian police started investigating the group following reports that it was arming itself.

Several of its leaders were arrested in Bauchi, sparking deadly clashes with security forces which led to the death of about 700 people. Yusuf was arrested and killed in Maiduguri on 30 Jul, 2009, by Nigerian security forces after being taken into custody.

In January 2010, the group struck in the Borno State capital, killing four people in Dala Alemderi ward, while the sect freed more than 700 inmates from a prison in Bauchi State. In December 2010, members of the sect bombed a market and 92 of its members were arrested by the police.

Their activities peaked on Friday, 28 Jan, 2011, when the governorship candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party, was assassinated, along with his brother and four police officers. On 17 Jun, the group attacked the Force headquarters at Louis Edet House in Abuja. About 73 vehicles were destroyed by the bombs detonated by a suicide bomber.

Officials believed that the attack was the first suicide bombing in Nigeria's history. Nine days later, on 26 Jun, the sect bombed a beer garden in Maiduguri. The militants on motorcycles threw explosives into the drinking spot, killing about 25 people.

On 27 Jun, another bombing in Maiduguri, attributed to the group, killed at least two girls and wounded three officers of the Nigeria Customs Service. On 3 Jul, another bombing of a beer garden in Maiduguri killed at least 20 people.

Again on 26 Aug, this year, the sect bombed the UN House in Abuja and foreign security agencies probing the attack suspect that al-Qaeda probably had a hand in it. Security reports indicated that members of the Boko Haram had received training from groups affiliated to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Algeria.

It was gathered that some police officers are suspected to be members of the sect or are simply in support of their action due to fear or ethnic affiliation hence it has been difficult for security agencies to stop their dastardly activities.

[Description of Source: Lagos Newswatch in English - independent weekly news magazine]

Report Says Arrest Rumor Prompted Boko Haram's Yobe State Massacre

AFP20111119619002 Lagos TheNews in English 14 Nov 11 - 21 Nov 11 41-43

[Report by Ben Adaji: "The Yobe Massacre"]

A series of well coordinated attacks by the Boko Haram sect paralyze security agencies in Yobe State and yields a harvest of deaths and destruction

For residents of Damaturu, the capital of Yobe State, the weekend of 4 Nov was one that is better forgotten. But there is little chance that anyone of cognitive age will succeed in blotting out the weekend’s events from memory.

Eid-el-Kabir, the important festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide, was two days away. Preparations for the festival were in top gear with rams being feverishly bought for slaughter.

But on the day of the festival, Damaturu was left looking like war-time Rwanda, following a series of bomb and gun attacks carried out by members of the Boko Haram Islamic sect. Buildings stood smoldering and grotesque wreckages of vehicles were ubiquitous. So were corpses.

The leaves of the city’s Neem trees, which provided shade from the Damaturu oppressive heat fluttered as no one took shade under them. Residents that did not flee from the astounding carnage kept off the streets.

The attacks, said residents, began at about 4:30 p.m. on that day and lasted till 4 am the next day. When the guns and explosions stopped, over a hundred people had been killed. Countless were injured, while properties worth billions of naira were destroyed.

The attacks, this magazine learnt, were sparked by a piece of information received by the Boko Haram sect that the group’s second-in-command, Mohammed Nuhu, was arrested in Maiduguri by the men of the Joint Task Force and detained at a police station, preparatory to his transfer to Abuja.

To stop that from happening, they mobilized their members and blocked the three major entrances to Damaturu. A group took care of Maiduguri Road, while two others sealed off roads leading from the city to Gashua and Gujba respectively.

Each group was said to have been ordered to start attacking by 4.30 p.m. The first set of targets included the state Police Command Headquarters, office of the Police Anti-Terrorism Squad as well as other security outfits, where officers were killed aplenty.

This was evidently done to limit a fight back by the security agencies. It worked like magic. A Honda CRV car bearing two Boko Haram suicide bombers took care of the headquarters of the Anti-Terrorism Squad located at the 300 Housing Unit Estate.

The Second-in-command at the squad, Deputy Superintendent of Police Adamu Idi, told this magazine that he was standing about 500 meters away when the car arrived at the headquarters and drove to the administrative building also housing some police officers and their families.

As Idi waited for the visitors to step down from the vehicle, the bombs went off, ripping through the building and killing a police constable, Ali Kashim, and two children of the officers occupying the building.

Also badly damaged were 14 vehicles, including seven patrol vehicles and a bullet-proof Toyota Hilux van. Twenty other buildings on the estate were affected.

Idi said that the attack rendered his men impotent as they had no vehicles to move. "They knew we would have demolished them. That was why they attacked us first," he said. Just as that was going on, the group on Maiduguri Road stormed the town and started shooting at everything above ground level.

The group on Gashua Road also moved, bombing the federal secretariat and the Nigerian Prisons Service Headquarters on Gashua Road. At the city’s major roundabout, so many people, especially motorists, were killed. Boko Haram members also bombed a branch of First Bank.

The batch on Gujba were said to have moved towards the state Police Command Headquarters, reducing the main building to ruins with explosions, which burnt a large number of vehicles parked in the compound, before advancing to the major roundabout to join the two other groups where they were killing for fun.

Hassan Muazu, a resident, said that most of the assailants looked like they are aged between 16 and 17. Johnson Dimkwa, who witnessed the madness at the major roundabout, said that after shooting and killing the driver of a police patrol vehicle, Boko Haram members, whom he confirmed looked like teenagers, sang and jubilated wildly.

"At a point, they were shouting: ‘Where are the policemen, where are the soldiers; we want them to come out," he said.

A food vendor said that she thought war had come. The vendor, who was on her way home from the market when the violence began, said that she dived into a gutter and slept there till the next morning. "If they wanted to take over the government house that night, they could easily have succeeded," said another eyewitness at the roundabout.

When the Boko Haram members were sated, they moved to New Jerusalem, a Christian-dominated neighborhood, where they lustily continued the bombing and shooting. Over 10 churches were bombed, while about 40 vehicles on their premises were licked by the angry flames of the bombs.

The first church to go down was the Living Faith Church located in the New Jerusalem area. The assailants bombed the main church building, the pastor’s office and the children’s section. The pastor of the church, Emmanuel Ekigho, told TheNEWS that the church lost property worth N60 million.

Reverend Toma Duwara of the Brethren of Nigeria Church said that the Boko Haram members drove to the church in a convoy of vehicles, bombed the church and burnt four vehicles. He estimated that the incident has cost the church about N20 million.

Other churches destroyed included St. Mary’s Catholic Church, the Cherubim and Seraphim Church, ECWA Good News Church, the Anglican Church, the Assemblies of God, Global Academy Mission of Nigeria, and the Charismatic Revival Mission.

Eucharia Joseph, a resident of New Jerusalem who lost her father, said: "We don’t know our offence; we are just civilians. I hope this kind of disaster will never happen again."

When the demolition job in New Jerusalem was completed, the marauders returned to the centre of the town to continue shooting fleeing residents. At the main roundabout vehicles and their occupants were burnt.

The orgy continued all through the night, as security agencies had been effectively castrated through attack on their offices and officers. Damaturu resembled an expansive morgue. A resident told this magazine that he counted 133 corpses.

A mortuary attendant at a hospital said that over 90 corpses had been claimed by their relations. A senior Federal Road Safety Corps officer told this medium that he counted over 150 corpses at a hospital. "The mortuary of the hospital is very small and the facilities there were overstretched. Most of the corpses were either on the floor or outside the building.

"I saw over 150 dead bodies and dozens were in uniforms," he said. He explained that affected families, in respect of religion and tradition, had evacuated the remains of their loved ones in order to bury them. This, he suggested, accounted for the wildly conflicting figures for deaths.

The Red Cross officials said that 63 people were killed and six churches burnt. A Red Cross official said that two other people were killed and five wounded in a separate attack in Potiskum, the biggest town in the state.

An official of a federal government agency claimed that he counted 136 dead bodies. "We counted 135 male corpses and one female, while 17 males and four females were critically injured," he said.

The official said that two rifles and a refrigerator belonging to the Nigerian Immigration Service were carted away. However, the state Police Commissioner, Suleiman Mamman, put the death toll at 53.

Among those killed, according to the police boss, were 11 policemen and two soldiers, two officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps, one officer each of the Nigeria Civil Defense Corps, Nigerian Immigration Service and the Nigeria Customs Service as well as seven Boko Haram suicide bombers.

The commissioner added that a professor travelling from Potiskum to Maiduguri as well as a member of the National Youth Service Corps were also killed. Most of the police officers killed, he said, were in a six-storey building, which was their residence. Many of them, he added, had retired from service.

The commissioner, who announced a dusk to dawn curfew, also confirmed that six places of worship and many federal government establishments were burnt.

The deputy governor of Yobe State, Abubakar Ali, who visited the scenes of the blasts, later had a secret meeting with the police commissioner. As at press time, the state government had not released any statement on the tragedy.

Journalists, who visited the morgue at the Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital, said that they counted over 130 corpses burnt beyond recognition. Moses Daniel, a resident of Nasarawa area of the city, told this magazine at the hospital that he had come to collect the corpse of his brother.

This magazine’s trip around Damaturu on 6 Nov showed that the city was almost completely deserted. Even the few residents sighted were rushing out of the town with their families. When TheNEWS visited the Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital, all the injured persons had been evacuated for fear of another attack.

Damaturu residents blame the free reign of terror on security agencies. "Policemen and civilians were running for their lives while these people killed unchallenged. In fact, we have a state without a government," said Malam Abu Gada, a civil servant.

Joseph Daudu, another resident, is of the same view. He lamented that when the operation started, residents fled to the police command headquarters only to find policemen fleeing. "What type of police commissioner do we have?" he asked.

This magazine gathered that before the attack, there were no police checkpoints in Damaturu. "We are close to Maiduguri where Boko Haram bombs explode regularly, but that never moved our police commissioner to order that vehicles coming into Damaturu be screened," said a resident, who called for the immediate redeployment of the commissioner.

Efforts to get the commissioner to react to these accusations proved abortive as what is left of the command headquarters was under tight security. Meanwhile, the Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] is counting its losses following the attacks in Damaturu, Yobe State.

The association said that six of its churches were burnt by the extremists. CAN President, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor disclosed that at least four of its members were killed in coordinated attacks, one at a college in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, while Mujahideen gunmen attacked a church in Kaduna, shooting two female worshippers to death.

Lamenting that Islamic sects in the North had constantly launched assault on Christians, Oritsejafor called on the federal government to demonstrate the political will to deal decisively with the increasing wave of terrorism in the country, arguing that the much needed investment-friendly environment might be a pipe dream if there is no peace in the nation.

"We just cannot continue to put our wrong foot forward all the time and expect investors to come and invest their money in an unsafe environment," he said. The cleric said that the leadership of CAN would soon convene an emergency meeting and come up with a more comprehensive reaction to the latest round of violence.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch said last Tuesday that the bloody assaults on Damaturu and Potiskum were an indefensible attack on human life. The rights group stated that since the beginning of 2011, Boko Haram had been implicated in attacks in which more than 425 people had been killed.

It identified those killed by the sect attack to include police officers, soldiers, community leaders, politicians, Islamic clerics, Christian pastors, and church members. According to the rights group, the recent attacks resulted in the highest death toll in a single day since Boko Haram began its campaign of violence in Nigeria in July 2009. "Boko Haram has once again demonstrated its utter disregard for human life.

The authorities should act swiftly to bring to justice those responsible for these terrible crimes and for earlier attacks that left hundreds dead," the statement quoted Corinne Dufka, Senior West Africa Researcher at Human Rights Watch, as saying.

The statement said that the body had documented dozens of attacks by members of the Islamic sect over the past year, including those on police stations, military facilities, prisons, banks, beer halls, and churches."The Nigerian authorities need to ensure that all law enforcement operations in response to Boko Haram are conducted in accordance with international human rights standards.

The most effective way to counter the abhorrent tactics employed by groups like the Boko Haram is to scrupulously adhere to respect for human rights and the rule of law," the statement added.

On Wednesday last week, the sect showed that it would not relent in its bombing campaign when its men attacked a police station and government office in Mainok in Damaturu destroying both buildings, but the government denied a resident’s claim of police casualties.

Mainok is less than 80 kilometers from Damaturu. "It is true that there were attacks on a police outpost in Mainok village," said Simeon Midenda, the Borno State Police Commissioner, but there were no casualties because that particular outpost was shut down long ago and the policemen there were redeployed to Maiduguri."

A resident, however, told the AFP that about 20 gunmen attacked the police station, throwing explosives inside, before moving on to the state Federal Road Safety Corps headquarters, which was also destroyed along with vehicles parked there. "They killed four policemen, freed suspects from cells and carted away guns and ammunition from the police station," the resident said.