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Nigerian City Gripped by Fear After Islamist Attacks
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — 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.
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Tough-talking Hafiz Ringim
RECENTLY, the news of the suicide bombing in Abuja hit me like a bucket of cold water. I stayed glued to my radio set so as to get the true story of this gory incident, but my neighbours' dog, Jimmy, would not stop barking, the same high, rhythmic bark. Damn this dog, I've got to listen to this news.
A bomb blew up inside the Nigeria police headquarters killing a suspected suicide bomber and others, witnesses and officials said. The blast tore into a police car park at the compound in Abuja, throwing people to ground and destroying several vehicles. Holy Mary, Mother of God! This is the first suicide bombing in Nigeria as we face a growing threat from Islamic militants. Boko Haram Islamic sect, we gathered has claimed responsibility for this bombing that left eight people dead and 77 vehicles destroyed. A statement from a senior member of the group, Abu Zaid, said the attack at the police headquarters was to prove a point to all who doubt the capabilities of the sect.
It said it was angered by a police declaration that the days of Boko Haram are numbered.
The Police have claimed to have randomly detained at least 58 Boko Haram sect members. The 58 members we were told were moved to Abuja aboard a military aircraft. This Boko Haram members are full of hate. They are now the monster that grew out of despair.
Bombs are going off everywhere in Nigeria, even in places which are supposed to be the safest due to their supposedly tight security. With the adoption of suicide bombing by this sect, Nigeria is now unsafe. If suicide bombers can detonate bombs at the National Police Headquarters,then nowhere is safe again.
The Inspector General of Police, Alhaji Hafiz Ringim had in Borno State announced that the days of Boko Haram were numbered, and that the police will soon flush out the group. Tough- talking Ringim. He can go ahead to jump and talk the entire tough about how he can flush out the Boko Haram group. He can bang his fists on the wall, beat his chest, kick and shout till he is hoarse, but we want to see action. He should make things happen.
To me, it is time we find someone that can restructure the police, overhaul the system, improve the intelligence gathering efforts and capabilities. For now, the Nigeria Police is obsolete in attitude, training and functions.
Kenneth Uwadi, Mmahu-Egbema,
Imo State.
Source: Tribune, 1st July 2011.
EXCUSE ME: Fragments
By Victor Ehikhamenor
The log of wood seen on the distant shoulder of a stranger has suddenly become the charred corpse of a relative. What we used to witness from a distance has hit us squarely – Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen. Places where cafes and bars clinking wine glasses compete with shattering window glasses to ring death knells.
In CNN and Al Jazera, it used to be a far away smoke that emits no smell, so you go about your business and say it will never happen here because you are used to ordinary guns, machetes at most, cocktail Molotov thrown on unsuspecting houses, and Jos.
Or flying boats blazing the oily waters of the Niger Delta with ammunition snaking down defiant necks. It will never get to us here in Abuja, they said, and threw billions into burning militancy – go in peace and scream no more.
The broken sounds were so distant – it is up north sir, not anywhere close by – they said. They were comfortable in measuring lives in distances, away and so far away that they refused to think clearly and reasonably about Boko Haram.
They couldn't imagine their faces and complexity, unlike Ku Klux Klan burning blacks and flags in hooded reverie, like Al Qaeda, like Taliban ramming planes into tall buildings.
Distances illuminate things with the wrong light, but they were okay with the tinted coloration of truth. They are yet to pinpoint what the problem really is, but tanks have already been rolled to the streets, as if the untrained soldiers know what to look for in a car meant for carnage.
Amnesty is for the living. Oil is thicker than blood sprayed on dusty arid regions. No time for viaticum, for death sends no notice anymore. Another attack in Maiduguri scrolls at the bottom of the television and you do a sign of the cross and mutter quick prayers for the departed souls. Last week, it was 25. Yesterday, the numbers were uncertain. Today, it is three.
They say everything is under control and those behind these heinous crimes will be brought to justice. But Maiduguri murders are being measured mathematically by the minute. Promises are the fastest action they take when outwitted and outdone by a more superior sect. But we say Amen and Hamdillah, at the same time curse the day the unrelenting bombers were born. We rub our hands together and pray for distances. But viaticum is for the dying, not the dead.
What about Hunger and Deprivation, as agbada become khaki and khaki becomes babariga? The knotty question of the Have nots and the Haves are relegated to closed ears, as politicians scramble for juicy positions.
David Mark's gavel is already hitting the oak table in accelerated clearing of the next batch of ministers. Opposition questions are swallowed by belches from overfed breakers of law in our Law-Making House. What we see on TV as screening and grilling is a rehearsal of the drama that has already played out in dimly lit chambers where we were never an audience.
Boko Haram cannot be wished away, this is as certain as the bombs going off every minute. A disease whose secret is unknown is hard to cure. In the name of who did the butchers of Bauchi slaughter, Youth Corpers? No answer. Yet we moved on as if five million naira is the exchange rate per Nigerian youth these days.
Caught in the dark vestibule of violence, our security chiefs are groping in the dark and echoing boastful words that resonate in the ears of those that do not matter. They are talking to themselves because every attack is an opportunity for them to defend their secured lifestyle instead of Nigerians.
Our police chief parades Washington giving speeches like a molue preacher. Madness is a man who goes weeping about his flaming trousers when his testicles are already charred. The military is hurried out of the barracks to mingle with bloody civilians and everything crawls faster than a dead snail in the capital.
We are afraid to clap to any quick-dry glue applied to our fragmented mirrors blown from glass windows. Niger Delta. Jos. Bauchi. Kano. Jos. Nigeria. Who can catch the whirlwind that uproots palm trees? Our land has become a loose translation of what the Mansai call Menengai – a place of corpses.
The iroko is discharging fire, let mothers that have errant children drag them by the ears to safety. Our days and nights are ruled by fear while our rulers guffaw in bunkers and bullet proof jeeps. Glasses can shatter and bottles can break. Mangled motor engines of yester bombs prove that iron can bend in seconds if not checked on time. Ashes are easier to make when things burn unquenched.
Who will be bold enough not to steal the money ear-marked for security and step on the toes of those that toss bombs from motorbikes and buried in the boot of used cars? Attempting to stop Boko Haram by boasting into press microphones is like catching a porcupine with bare hands.
The solution to this carnage lies beneath unopened reports used in propping up broken tables in obscure ministries. An ignored sore of today is the gangrene of tomorrow. Stop. Think. Strategise. And refrain from saying "Thank God, it is only three people that died."
Source: Next, 1st July 2011.
Beware, Gift items Could be Ladened with Bombs – Army chief
By KINGSLEY OMONOBI
ABUJA – Against the backdrop of bomb explosions in the country by Boko Haram members, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt-General Azubuike Ihejirika, has warned Nigerians to beware of gift items they receive during special or auspicious occasions as this could be avenues for terrorists to perpetrate their dastardly acts.
At a briefing, yesterday, Ihejirika explained that there were so many types of bomb or explosives that Nigerians were not aware of, which they should be cautious about. They include liquid bombs, several which can be put on gift items, parcel bombs and others.
The Army Chief noted that of the three bombs that were planted at the Bauchi Barrack Mammy Market, one of the bombs was a liquid bomb kept in a jerry can and left in the shop of a woman. Unknown to the woman, she thought it was kerosene that the owner forgot.
She subsequently carried the 'jerry can of kerosene' outside her shop and kept it somewhere far from the shop, where it eventually exploded. But for that singular act of the woman, the number of casualty in her shop would have been much", the COAS said.
He then warned that Nigerians should not only be vigilant, they should ask questions when someone no matter how close is sending them on errands, as some people can innocently become couriers of explosive materials for terrorists without knowing. In particular, we should be wary of gift items.
I know Nigerians like gifts a lot. Gift for birthdays, gift for marriages, gift for anniversary and even gift for churches. We should all be careful to avoid being caught unawares now."
Source: Vanguard, 1st July 2011.
In Defense of Boko Haram
Written by Osita Ebiem
Just this last Sunday, the 26th of June 2011 it was reported that the Boko Haram Islamic State Movement, BHISM in three separate bomb and indiscriminate shootings attacks on beer gardens in the city of Maiduguri of Borno State in Nigeria killed 25 and wounded 30 people. This is coming within a week of the suicide bomb attack of Nigeria police headquarters by the same separatist group. BHISM is just one amongst several other
separatist movements in today's Nigeria. BHISM is fighting for a separate independent and sovereign state whose legal system shall be based on the Islamic sharia. This is their fundamental human right as members of our common humanity. That is their way of life and they are entitled to it.
The other groups that represent the other ethnic groups in Nigeria also claim to be fighting to preserve their own unique ethnic culture/religious values in separate and independent sovereign states. Presently, Nigeria as the terminally ill orphan is being denied and abandoned by all the various parts that had connived and colluded to murder the parents of the child. But the most honorable thing to do by all concerned is to come together around a table and give the doomed child its befitting final rites. Do we hear someone saying that it will take some men and women with guts to do that? Not necessarily, guts is only a small part, we believe that it does not really take anything more than sincerity, honesty and a will to do the right thing. Incidentally, in a society that is fundamentally faulty those three qualities that should be taken for granted are really the big issues. Nevertheless, they may not be completely lacking. Let's cross our fingers and pray fervently that that is the case.
There may never be a better time than now to convene a conference by the Nigerian state to decide what each ethnic group wants out of the final disintegration of the union. The BHISM group representing the North of Nigeria has made clear their demands and it is fair that the other parts should be given the opportunity to state their own last wishes from the sinking ship. BHISM wants sharia within its own enclave and the Southeast/South/South is free to state their own demand. They can choose to be governed by Church canon or whatever they feel comfortable with. The Southwest and the Middle Belt can also ask to be administered by whatever tenets that seems right by them. This is the era of Self-Determination and it is fair and square.
Among the things that characterize the human dignity is living for something, living a life with a purpose; having something that one lives for or is prepared to give his or her life in exchange. It is when a people can begin to exhibit such attribute that they can actually claim to have evolved beyond the first level of the base animal. Education plays a very significant role in helping us human move steps upwards along this evolutionary ladder. And yet we hear most of the commentators on the recent incidents happening in Nigeria continue to emphasis the stupid statement that Boko Haram translates from Hausa into English as western education is sin as if that means that education is sin. It only states that a certain kind of education is to be accepted with some pinch of salt which is different from saying that the acquisition of all kinds of education is wrong. Education is only worth its value when it can elevate one's consciousness into living a life that is based on principles or beliefs instead of on the base instinctual materialistic level. Base animals spend their days and, nights for those that hunt at nights, chasing after food and basic necessities rather than on ideologies. They live just for the moment and when they happen to chance on some kind of windfall or abundance then they grab and grab and accumulate not because they have need for these things but because they can grab and do not know the difference.
By the acts of the BHISM they have continued to demonstrate that they are better educated and more highly evolved than most of their critics who merely live for what they need to satisfy their primary material needs. The rest of the ethnic groups in Nigeria as represented by Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, Oodua People's Congress, OPC, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, Middle Belt Federation, MBF, etc may continue to remain chicken in heart and pretentious as to not knowing what they need but here we must give credit to those who are bold and prepared to go for what they want, the Boko Haram group. These other groups may in self-delusion consider their approach as civilized while in actual fact they are indeed very primitive because they base their approach on fear and dishonesty. Fear is a characteristic of primitiveness and has always been retrogressive and a reason for why societies do not progress. Boldness, sincerity and honesty have always advanced societies and never the other way around.
Boko Haram Islamic State Movement, BHISM is bold and has the courage enough to go for what they consider good for themselves and their people. We must get the picture right, what one group may consider good for them may not necessarily feel good for the other people, but what does that matter. Each group should be able to define what is good for them and their people and be bold enough to go for it. So far, all the moves of the BHISM are commendable because the world has always belonged to those who are bold, sincere, honest and proactive and never to the sissies and the 'politically correct' ones. The chickens in heart only issue threats in such flowery languages that lull children and weak minds to sleep. They use some self-serving 'politically correct' languages and never effect any positive change whatsoever.
When any group has a genuine interest of their people at heart they will give a fight to preserve and advance those interests. As it is right now, all the Igbo, Yoruba and all other separatist ethnic and self-determination groups in Nigeria are nothing more than threat mongers. In self-delusion they issue warnings after warnings that are completely worthless and very aggravating to all observers because these watchers know that nothing ever gets done through the mere calling of bluffs. This is particularly pathetic since these groups are supposed to be the vanguards of their various ethnic people. But in the meanwhile they are morally bankrupt and are yet to consider their peoples' cultures/religions and way of life worth fighting for not to talk of dying for. And the truth is that the so-called non-violent agitation is not what makes your method a better or more civilized, it is what one is fighting for that justifies their means. Down through the
ages nothing that is meaningful has ever been achieved by any people by mere pronouncements that are not backed by enforceable sanctions. On the other hand, for all those who accomplish much, they just implement the details of their blueprints rather than make pronouncements after pronouncements that do not have the hearts of the announcers anywhere near their utterances. You become jokes when you continually make statements that you have no intention of backing up with actions.
All the activities of BHISM have remained consistent with the tenets of the sharia system. The 12 Northern Nigeria Sharia States have already adopted a set of legal system that they consider right and conducive for their people and why should anyone else complain about it. Among the implications of adopting the sharia legal system is that there should be strict implementation of the rules within the enclave where the laws apply. If therefore Borno State, Bauchi State and other 10 states have adopted sharia why would anybody frown at the moves of the members of Boko Haram Islamic State Movement trying to enforce the strict adherence to sharia within the Sharia States? Such frowning only amounts to nothing more than insincerity and hypocrisy on the side of the detractors. All those who find sharia too harsh should relocate. This is simple enough. Other people from other areas should go back to their own places and implement whatever they are comfortable
with. Maybe in so doing they will be finally forced to sit down and honestly rethink the stupidity of one-Nigeria.
IN DEFENSE OF BOKO HARAM
By Osita Ebiem
We'll defeat you, Defence chief tells Boko Haram
•••Commissioned QIP for Jaji community
From GARBA MUHAMMAD, Kaduna
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petirin has assured that the emerging challenges of insecurity posed by the frequent attacks by the Boko Haram sect in the country will soon be conquered.
He lamented that over 100 innocent people had been killed by a ruthless and violent extremist organisation, which had introduced the indiscriminate use of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) into internal environment, targeting innocent civilians for murder. "Many commentators expect that the emerging challenges will take many turns we cannot predict, yet I am certain of this, we shall defeat them," He re-assured Nigerians.
Addressing graduands of Senior Course 33 ahead of their graduation ceremony scheduled for today at a regimental dinner on Wednesday night at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College (AFCSC), Jaji, near Kaduna, the CDS lamented that civilians who had not harmed anyone but were going about their daily lives were the victims of these attacks. He said, "their only offence was that they were in the right place at the wrong time and are instantly killed by a group that preaches an ideology that is denied by their own."
The defence chief represented by Air Vice Marshal Dick Enavere warned that the military would not put their faith in the world of tyrants, who want to score political point by terrorising the same people they claim to represent.
"The attacks we are facing nowadays require only a few evil and deluded men to cause chaos and suffering at much less than the cost of a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG). We need to be reminded that these new threats require new thinking because of this shadow terrorist who neither have a territory nor citizens to defend. The choices we will face are complex and the work ahead is difficult.
"This kind of security will require the best intelligence to reveal threats hidden in high density areas and will require transforming the military. You will lead a military that must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any corner of the country. The pursuit of professionalism has always been important to the military throughout history, not only because it enhances the capacity to prosecute wars but also because it enhances the social responsibility of the personnel and his capacity to manage violence.
"So, as you leave this great institution, it becomes your challenge as well and we will meet this challenge together," the CDS told the graduands. In a related development, the CDS yesterday commissioned a military Quick Impact Project (QIP)undertaken by the AFCSC to impact on the health, safety and standard of living of the host community and to erode negative perceptions of the Armed Forces, leading to alienation of poor civil-military relations.
The projects included a bus stop and adjoining car park and pedestrian walkway to reduce the alarming rate of road traffic accidents around the Jaji Market as well as bore holes at Ungwan Pete and Wunoso to improve the health and well-being of the community.
Source: Sun, 1st July 2011.
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