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

The commandant said they were helping with investigations and his men were already going after their principals, assuring the residents of Maiduguri that the task force was not out to intimidate anybody.

He said his men were deployed to ensure the safety of lives and property and to cooperate with everybody in the task of getting this done.

In a similar development, the Borno State Commandant of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Bwala Hatsiwa, has said that to arrest the Boko Haram upsurge in the country then, teeth must be given to the current drug war.

Also, the Amnesty International has called on members of the Boko Haram to stop attacks on civilians after the bombing that killed as many as 25 in Maiduguri Sunday.

However, the group was silent on the attack on the Nigerian military and police but rather mentioned at the later part of a press statement issued yesterday that the Nigerian security forces had carried out mass arrests, tortured suspects and detained people without charge or trial for lengthy periods.

[Description of Source: Lagos This Day Online in English -- Website of the independent daily; URL: http://www.thisdaylive.com/]

Nigeria: Northeastern Borno State Government Ready To Dialogue With Boko Haram

AFP20110630683003 Lagos This Day Online in English 15 Jun 11

[Report by Michael Olugbode: "Borno Govt, Boko Haram Ready for Dialogue"]

Borno State Government Tuesday said progress has been made in the planned dialogue with the notorious Islamic fundamentalist group, Boko Haram as one of its factions has indicated interest in dialogue.

Speaking to journalists, in Maiduguri, the State Deputy Governor, Alhaji Zanna Mustapha said the state government has also put everything in place to end the onslaught of the group on the state with the donation of ten Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs) to the police.

The deputy governor while revealing that the group is currently factionalized into three said this has made it difficult to know who is who among the group adding that since one of the factions has shown willingness to talk to government, they do no have a choice but to keep their doors opened.

He however said the government was making the offer to dialogue because it is interested in bringing peace and harmony to the state and this should not be seen as a sign of weakness.

Mustapha said the government will not accept some unreasonable publicized conditions touted by unidentified persons.

Scores of suspected members of Boko Haram detained at Maiduguri police headquarters in 2009.

He said if government will go into dialogue with the Boko Haram group it has to be in the interest of majority of the people of the state and not based on some difficult conditions of the fundamentalists.

He emphasized that the dialogue has to be on the conditions of government and not that of the Boko Haram even as he reassured the people of the state that the government will not do anything that will undermine their security.

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Hafiz Ringim who was in the state to take delivery of the APCs said the task of the police in curbing the excesses of the Boko Haram was made difficult because his men were not assisted with the right information.

The police boss, who emphasized the fact that the task of security of lives and property is that of everyone, insisted that the only way the police can push the Islamic fundamentalists out of Borno is when it is given the right information to work with.

Ringim however assured that with the latest additions into the police armouring the group would be haunted and driven out of Borno.

He disclosed that he has told his men that their task is to ensure peace and order and that they have assured him they are ready to comb all the nooks and crannies of the state for the Islamic fundamentalists.

[Description of Source: Lagos This Day Online in English -- Website of the independent daily; URL: http://www.thisdayonline.com]

Fear Grips Northern Nigerian City After Islamist Attacks

AFP20110701309002 Paris AFP (World Service) in English 1541 GMT 01 Jul 11

["Nigerian city gripped by fear after Islamist attacks" -- AFP headline]

MAIduguri, Nigeria, July 1, 2011 (AFP) - Fear pervades the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri where hundreds of troops have been deployed after a wave of bombings and shootings by the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram.

A week after at least 25 people died and dozens were injured in a single attack, the beer garden where it took place stands scorched and empty, strewn with blackened debris. A few goats attracted by heaps of corn grain are the only sign of life.

Scores of military checkpoints have sprung up around the city.

"The city has been under siege from Boko Haram and the military following these senseless attacks that have put everybody on edge," said resident Hadi Sadiq.

The attack, in which Islamists hurled explosives and fired indiscriminately, came on the day a joint military task force was launched to combat a spate of earlier bomb and shoot-and-run assaults.

The initiative saw hundreds of military, navy, air force, police, immigration and customs personnel deployed to quash the sect on the orders of President Goodluck Jonathan.

Boko Haram launched a short-lived armed uprising two years ago in a doomed bid to establish an Islamic state.

Although the rebellion was crushed in a military assault that killed hundreds, mostly sect members, it failed to deter further attacks.

"What is more frightening to residents of this city is the bomb attacks that continue to increase in frequency, magnitude and sophistication despite the deployment of troops," said Khalifa Dikwa, a linguistics professor at Maiduguri University.

Last year, the sect began to launch shoot-and-run killings, targeting police and military personnel, community and religious leaders as well as politicians. It also added to its guerrilla tactics, bomb attacks on police and government facilities, as well as churches.

"Nowhere is safe in Maiduguri even with the military presence," Jummai Musa, a beer seller, said. A checkpoint erected 500 metres from the beer garden was like "medicine after death", she added.

A day after the beer garden attack, suspected sect members detonated a bomb concealed in a car parked outside the customs office, killing two girl vendors.

On Tuesday gunmen opened fire on a military checkpoint around the same area leading to a shootout with soldiers but there were no casualty.

Troops that have been deployed in the city are on edge and do not leave anything to chance.

Motorcyclists have to disembark 500 metres (550 yards) from checkpoints and push their bikes until they pass the checkpoints as a precaution against attacks by the Islamists.

Searches of vehicles are stepped up at night and troops fire sporadic warning shots in the air to scare away potential attackers, an AFP reporter witnessed.

"We can't take any chances," said a soldier at a checkpoint.

The unrest has also taken a toll on the economy of the city. Businesses are gradually closing and relocating to other cities while social activities have been grounded.

"I have relocated my business.... I'm here to pack my remaining personal effects because I can't operate in this atmosphere of insecurity," said Umar Mudassir, an IT consultant.

A group of residents aired their complaints in an open letter to President Jonathan in the Daily Trust newspaper on Thursday.

"Continuation of this situation will ultimately lead to the collapse of the local economy, leading to more despair and further conflict.

"More indiscriminate military and police intervention will lead to an angry population which will sympathise with, aid and assist the young as they take up arms against authority," the group said.

But the military commander of the special crack unit, Brigadier-General Jack Okechukwu Nwaogbo, is determined to end Boko Haram's reign of terror.

"My mandate is to end this Boko Haram issue, I'm not here to curtail it but to end it and restore peace and order in Borno State," Nwaogbo told AFP in Maiduguri.

"It is a diffic ult mandate, given the type of adversary we are dealing with," Nwaogbo admitted.

[Description of Source: Paris AFP (World Service) in English -- world news service of the independent French news agency Agence France Presse]

Report Quotes Policeman as Saying Boko Haram Membership Includes Cops

AFP20110701619007 Lagos Newswatch in English 27 Jun 11 - 04 Jul 11 14-20

[Report by Dike Onwuamaeze: "A thorn in the flesh of the nation"]

Nigerians in various parts of the country live in fear as Boko Haram members kill maim innocent people

He sat alone at one of the desks in a local shop that morning. Beside him was a bag containing all is belongings. The man is a police officer. But you would not know unless he told you or showed you his ID card.

The man was set for a trip to the Southwest that day in May. It was an impromptu trip as the man said that he needed a "break" from his work. He had seen a lot since the past six months he had been on police duty in Damaturu in Yobe State. The most traumatic for him was when a close friend of his, a police officer, was shot dead in Maiduguri by unknown gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram members.

The death of the police officer, whom he said hailed from Rivers State, had left him devastated. "I just need a break from this work," he told Newswatch. "I was posted here six months ago but to me, I've had enough. I just want to go back to my family in the west. I don't care what anybody thinks or says. I need a break," he repeated.

There is no doubt that the police officer was worried about the Boko Haram, an Islamic fundamentalist sect, which has become a thorn in the flesh of the nation. "They are not only in Maiduguri. They have their members here too," he said.

He added that "even some police officers in Damaturu are suspected to be members of the sect or are simply in support of their action either due to fear or tribal affiliation." That, he said, was even why it is difficult to apprehend members of the sect since even the security officers that should fight them appear to shield them from arrest and prosecution.

This is the dilemma facing many Nigerians as they come face-to-face with the alarming state of insecurity in the country. Even Abuja, the seat of power, which hitherto was regarded as Nigeria's oasis of peace and comfort is no longer an exception. It has witnessed four bomb blasts in the past nine months.

The last of the four cases of bomb explosion took place on 16 Jun at the premises of the Nigeria Police Headquarters. The explosion affected the movement of people in Abuja. Some people cancelled all their plans for the day and stayed at home after the explosion occurred.

Alokwu. A., a retired civil servant, who had lived in the city for 25 years, was at home when the news of the latest bomb explosion in Abuja came to him. He cancelled all his appointments for that day and remained indoors. When he made up his mind to hit the streets the next day, he did so in trepidation.

Alokwu said that nobody believed that such dastardly acts of criminality could happen in Abuja. "Nobody believed that Abuja would become a theatre for terrorism but the serial bomb blasts since October 2010, has created untold fear in the minds of many people who are now afraid for their lives.

We go out in fear looking at everybody suspiciously not knowing who is who," he said. Today, Abuja is a besieged city with armed security personnel patrolling every nook and crannies of the city 24 hours.

There are now armed policemen in bars and eateries as well as around churches. This is in an effort to maintain law and order in the city after the 16 Jun explosion. The police have two versions of the story of the bombing in Abuja.

The first version claimed that the suicide bomber had accompanied Hafiz Ringim, the inspector general's convoy into the premises of Police Headquarters as the convoy drove in. The second version of the incident, which came into circulation on Monday, 20 Jun, claimed that the inspector general had met with the bomber at his official residence before leaving for his office.

The bomber was said to have pledged his assistance in the fight against the Boko Haram sect. The bomb blast, Newswatch learnt, killed several people including visitors, drivers, and members of the Police Mobile Force on stand-by at the headquarters as well as several people and contractors who milled around the vast parking lot.

Apart from two burnt corpses which were taken to the Asokoro General Hospital mortuary, the other victims were mangled and flung far apart within the premises in bits and pieces that were too small to be picked up.

The attack on the police headquarters was allegedly triggered by Ringim's declaration in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State that the days of Boko Haram were numbered. He made this statement on 14 Jun when he visited the state to receive armored vehicles donated to the police by the state government.

"Now that the elections are over, our attention would be concentrated and I want to assure you that the days of the Boko Haram are numbered," Ringim had said. But this statement did not go down well with the members of the Boko Haram, which issued its own counter statement on 15 Jun.

In the statement, which was originally issued in Hausa but translated and broadcast in English by the African Independent Television, the Boko Haram stated that its dialogue with the government had failed because of the statement of the police inspector general and actions of Borno State government which purchased 10 armored vehicles to fight them.

The sect advised civilians to restrict their movements in Maiduguri and its environs as well as all the 12 northern states and the federal capital territory. It said that the need for the counter statement was to avoid the shedding of civilians' blood in the coming jihad.

"Very soon, we will wage jihad on the enemies of God and his prophet. We have returned to Nigeria from Somalia where we had serious training on warfare. We want to assure all the security agencies that we will frustrate their efforts in spite of the armored vehicles they have purchased with the training we have acquired in Somalia."

To demonstrate that their threat was not a mere hot air, a member of the Boko Haram on a suicide mission trailed the convoy of the police boss but was diverted from the convoy by a traffic warden at the police headquarters to the car park where the bomb exploded, killing the bomber, the traffic warden and several other people.

As the dust raised by the Abuja Bomb blast was clearing, the Boko Haran group re-enacted their murderous exploit in Damboa, a border town in Borno State, on the same day, when it unleashed a bomb attack that killed three persons. Also on Sunday, 19 Jun, members of Boko Haram gunned down two persons and injured one in the Gomari Airport part o Maiduguri.

The victims were reportedly relaxing in their front yard after returning from church services. Currently, Nigerians in the villages and the cities now live their lives in fear because they do not know when an armed robber, a kidnapper or a suicide bomber would come their way.

In Lagos, Katsina, Kano, Ondo, Rivers, Borno, and Kaduna and several other states, the story is the same. On Sunday, 20 Jun, in Kankara town in Katsina State, rampaging gunmen suspected to be members of the Boko Haram, detonated explosives at a police station and killed a divisional crime officer and four other policemen.

Even though the natives believed that the assailants were members of the Boko Haram, the police are yet to link the attack to the sect.

In Lagos State, the following day, there was a bomb scare in Oshodi, a major market and bus terminal. It created pandemonium as traders and their customers ran helter-skelter. It took the intervention of the police anti-bomb squad, which confirmed that there was nothing to be afraid of after combing the vicinity to calm down their fears.

On the same day in Kano State, residents of Gunduawa, in Gezewa local government area, were gripped with fear of the Boko Haram group when Umar Suffi, a police traffic officer, was killed by assailants. However, the police in a swift reaction clarified that the members of the dreaded sect had no hand in the murder.

Maidugiri, the hotbed of Boko Haram assaults, is literally a battlefield. Stern-faced and heavily armed policemen man roadblocks and patrol the city in their armored vehicles. The roadblocks which are unusual in the city cause a lot of traffic and make moving cumbersome and dreary.

But in spite of this, the gangs unleash mayhem in the city on daily bases. Bomb blasts and random assassinations of innocent citizens are so frequent that residents of the city are losing their counts. A resident, who spoke to Newswatch under anonymity, said that they sleep, wake, work, and eat in fear of the sect.

On 30 May, gunmen suspected to belong to the group killed Abba Anas Ibn EL-Kanemi, the younger brother of the Shehu of Borno. Prior to the 2011 general elections, members of the sect were alleged to have killed the younger brother of the state's former governor.

Emboldened by the easy and successful ways they execute their plots, members of the Boko Haram recently called for the resignation of Kashim Shetima, the governor of Borno State. They have also asked Ringim to apologize to Nigerians and resign his appointment as the inspector general of the Nigeria police.

"The police boss should offer a public apology and, thereafter, resign his position because he caused the Abuja blast. He has also failed in his responsibility," a Boko Haram source said.

Mike Ejiofor, a retired director of State Security Service, said that the goal of the Islamic fundamentalist is to create the impression that the government is incapable of providing security to the people.

Since its formation in 2002 in Maiduguri by Mohammed Yusuf, the Boko Haram has been a pain in the neck of Nigeria's security agencies especially the police over its opposition to western education that it believes is sinful. The Islamic fundamentalist group relocated its base to Kanamma in Yobe State in 2004.

From its new location, which was named "Afghanistan," the group set about attacking and killing members of the Nigeria police. Yusuf was quoted by the BBC in 2004 as saying that "this war that is yet to start would continue for a very long time."

A violent clash between the Boko Haram and the security forces ensued in July 2009 culminating in the killing of Yusuf in the custody of the Nigeria police. But his death did not stop the activities of the group he founded. It rather made them more aggressive.

An un-exhaustive chronology of the outrageous activities alleged to have been carried out by the group showed that members of the group killed four people in Dala Alemderi in Maiduguri in January 2010. It also attacked and released about 700 prison inmates in Bauchi State and was responsible for a bomb blast in a market place.

On 24 Jan, Cable News Network [CNN] reported that the group was associated with the murder of a governorship candidate, his brother and four police officers. On 29 Mar, the police announced that it thwarted the group's plot to bomb an All Nigerian People's Party election rally in Maiduguri.

The group also attacked a police station in Bauchi, on 1 Apr and bombed a polling centre in Maiduguri on 9 Apr. It was also alleged that on 15 Apr, members of the group in different attacks shot several persons and bombed the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC] office in Maiduguri.

Five days later, the group killed a Muslim cleric and destroyed some police stations in Maiduguri. And on 22 Apr, it freed 14 prisoners in Yola in Adamawa State.

Bomb blasts and the menace of the Boko Haram are not the only security challenge facing the country. On Monday, 13 Jun, a gang of kidnappers swooped in on Igbokoda, a community in the Ilaje local government area of Ondo State and escaped with Mariam Oke, mother of Sola Oke, the national legal adviser of the People's Democratic Party to an unknown destination.

Not even a ransom has been placed over her head. Forlorn and in suspense, members of her family are hoping that the kidnappers were not assassins who are thirsty for the blood of innocent people. "But, if the kidnappers are listening to me, they should just for God's sake treat the woman kindly and they could think of her age," Oke said.

On 7 Jun, five members of the National Youths Service Corps were kidnapped in the Ikwere local government area of Rivers State. The kidnapped corps members, according to the police, were Yusuf Olumide, Fase Funmilayo, Chinonye Ejiogu, Nkechi Nweze, and Vivian Okwuanya. Initially, a ransom of N100 million was demanded by their captors, who later reduced it to N10 million.

The pomp and pageantry that attended the swearing in ceremonies of President Goodluck Jonathan on 29 May and that of the 26 state governors across the country turned sour as terrorists struck in Bauchi, Zaria in Kaduna State, Borno, and Zuba on the outskirts of Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory on 30 May.

Amidst the insecurity in the country, the president has assured Nigerians that the threat would soon be a thing of the past. "Let me use this opportunity to assure Nigerians that it happens all over the world. No country is free.

Nigeria is also having some ugly incidents lately. But surely, we will get over it and people should not panic at all. Soon, most of these things will be a thing of the past," Jonathan had said.

Yet, many Nigerians are pondering how the country arrived at this sorry pass. Some people hold the view that leaders of Boko Haram are not entirely abhorrent to the society.

Olisa Agbakoba, Senior Advocate of Nigeria described the Boko Haram phenomenon as a response to bad political leadership in the northern part of Nigeria where the governors introduced the Sharia with a promise of more abundant life for the people but without delivering the goods.

When the masses found out that they were let and left in the public square, everybody is wielding a knife just as every ethnic group wants a chunk from the elephant. How many chunks can they scoop before the meat is finished?

In their desperate scramble for the juiciest piece, how will the booty hunters avoid turning their knives on one another? Nigeria operates a structure that encourages blatant cannibalism."

Augustine Agugua, a criminologist in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lagos, said that Nigerians would miss the trend of the current insecurity in the country if their attention is focused on the Boko Haram alone. For him, the country is experiencing the anger of its deprived youths who are schemed out of decent means of making a living.

"The nature and type of crime experienced in any society inadvertently must have been created by that society," Agugua said, adding that Nigeria is going through a low intensive warfare. He said that the causes of this low intensity warfare has to do with the contradictions that informed the emergence of the Nigerian state at the point of independence, which got full blown with the events that predated the Nigerian civil war.

Another issue the current insecurity has thrown up is the weakness of our security agencies to detect and prevent crimes. Many Nigerians are concerned that the country is experiencing high degree of intelligence failure.

Agbakoba called on President Jonathan to vigorously shake up the framework supporting Nigeria's security process, which includes the human intelligence, communication intelligence, electronic intelligence and photographic intelligence. "I do not know how much of these we have.