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Muslim extremists abduct 100 girls from Nigerian school
Kidnappers of 100 Nigerian schoolgirls pretended to be soldiers, says witness
(about 11 hours later)
Suspected Muslim extremists have kidnapped about 100 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria, less than a day after militants bombed a bus station and killed 75 people in the capital — a surge of violence that raised new doubts about the military's ability to contain an Islamic uprising.
Suspected Muslim extremists have kidnapped about 100 girls from a school in northeastern Nigeria, less than a day after militants bombed a bus station and killed 75 people in the capital — a surge of violence that raised new doubts about the military's ability to contain an Islamic uprising.
With an 11-month-old state of emergency in three northeastern states failing to bring relief, the attacks are increasing calls for President Goodluck Jonathan to rethink his strategy in confronting the biggest threat to the security of Africa's most populous nation.
Islamist rebels in Nigeria duped dozens of schoolgirls into thinking they were soldiers who had come to evacuate them before abducting more than 100 in their latest anti-government raid, one of the survivors said as reports emerged of another attack in the country’s north-east that left 20 dead.
The attacks by the Boko Haram terrorist network have killed more than 1,500 people in this year alone, compared with an estimated 3,600 dead between 2010 and 2014.
Gunmen suspected to be members of the radical Boko Haram movement swooped on the town of Chibok in Borno state and its government secondary school for girls late on Monday, calling on students to leave their beds in its hostel.
In the latest attack, gunmen killed a soldier and a police officer guarding a school in Chibok on the edge of the Sambisa Forest and abducted the teenage girls after midnight, according to authorities.
The mass abduction of pupils aged between 15 and 18 has shocked Nigeria and showed how the five-year-old Boko Haram insurgency has brought lawlessness to swathes of the arid, poor North-east, killing hundreds of people in recent months.
Some of the girls escaped by jumping off the open truck as it was moving slowly along a road, according to an official.
It occurred on the same day that a bomb blast, also blamed on Boko Haram, killed 75 people on the edge of the capital, Abuja, stirring fears of violence spreading from the north of Africa’s leading oil producer and most populous nation. Today, gunmen attacked the village of Wala, in Gwoza district, and killed 20 people.
Islamic extremists have been abducting girls to use as cooks and sex slaves.
The site of the bus station bomb in Abuja, Nigeria
All schools in Borno state were closed three weeks ago because of stepped-up attacks that have killed hundreds of students in the past year. But the young women — aged between 16 and 18 — were recalled to take their final exams, a local government official said.
The unprecedented string of attacks has many questioning the role of politicians in the insurgency and the ability of the military to contain the Islamic uprising that has killed more than 1,500 people this year.
Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden,” has targeted schools, mosques, churches, villages and agricultural centers in assaults that are increasingly indiscriminate. The insurgents have also made daring raids on military barracks and bases.
The Chibok students, who had returned to sit final-year exams at their school despite a state-wide closure of Borno’s educational centres because of recent Boko Haram attacks, initially obeyed the armed visitors, thinking they were Nigerian troops there to protect them. “When we saw these gunmen, we thought they were soldiers. They told all of us to come and walk to the gates, we followed their instructions,” said Godiya Isaiah, 18, who later managed to escape the abductors. But when the armed men started ransacking the school stores and set fire to the building, the terrified girls being herded at gunpoint into vehicles realised they were being kidnapped.
The report of the abductions came as officials were still dealing with the aftermath of Monday's bombing at the Abuja bus station that killed 75 and wounded 141, just miles from Nigeria's seat of government. The attack also was blamed on Boko Haram.
“We were crying,” Ms Isaiah said, recounting how she later jumped from a truck and ran away to hide in the bush. Other girls were packed into a bus and some pick-ups.
Hundreds of distraught people searching for missing loved ones gathered outside the morgue of Abuja's Asokoro Hospital, where they were shown photos of bombing victims.
Inuwa Kubo, the Borno state education commissioner, said five other girls who also escaped told the same story. “They went into the bus unsuspecting,” he said. “They were lured into the vehicle because they were told the school was going to be attacked.”
“Innocent people are dying, for what they don't know,” said Tina Eguaoje, who identified her relative, a police corporal, from among the pictures. She said he had just returned from a tour of duty in Liberia and was in his first day at the police academy. The site of the bus station bomb in Abuja, Nigeria
The attackers also raided the nearby town of Chibok, ransacking shops and offices and killing several people. Boko Haram, which in the Hausa language broadly means “Western education is sinful”, has previously attacked schools as symbols of secular authority, killing pupils and teachers, as well as Christian churches and Nigerian state targets such as police, army and government offices.
MD Abubakar, the inspector general of police, urged Nigerians to come forward with any information to help track down those responsible for “this heinous crime.” He said authorities were taking “stronger measures to review current security strategies and strengthen the safety of all parts of the country.”
Police and army patrols are still scouring the bush and hills around Chibok for the missing girls, believed to number at least 100. A military spokesman called the abductors terrorists.
Last week, extremists staged their first reported attack in Jigawa state, to the west of the northeastern states where Boko Haram holds influence. They hit a police station, a Shariah Islamic court and a bank, and killed seven police officers.
Chibok is not far from a rugged area of forest, hills and caves where military officials say Boko Haram has camps near the border with neighbouring Cameroon. They have abducted girls in the past to be sex slaves for the fighters and to do camp work.
Farther south, Gov Gabriel Suswam of Benue state said traditional rivalries over land and water resources between mainly Christian farmers and predominantly Muslim herders are being exploited by militants. More than 200 people have been killed there in recent weeks.
No one has claimed responsibility for the abduction or for the rush-hour bomb blast on Abuja’s outskirts, which put the capital on alert about three weeks before the city was due to host a high-profile World Economic Forum on Africa.
“The belief I have, and which is shared by a lot of people, is that it is the same insurgents that are operating in other parts of the country that have found themselves in Benue, using the Fulani as a facade to unleash mayhem,” Suswam told the Daily Trust newspaper.
But President Goodluck Jonathan has pointed the finger of suspicion for the bombing at Boko Haram, bringing home to Nigerians in the centrally located capital that the Islamist insurrection ravaging poorer states hundreds of miles to the north-east could also strike closer to home.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar suggested it was time for the Nigerian government “to accept foreign assistance with fighting terrorism.”
With elections due in February, Mr Jonathan is under pressure to contain the Boko Haram insurgency and additional communal sectarian violence in northern Nigeria which badly tarnish the West African state’s newly acquired status as the largest economy on the continent.
“The bombings ... automatically cast doubts on the (government) claims of containing the crisis to the fringes of the country,” he said, urging stepped-up intelligence to pre-empt attacks.
Reuters
Abubakar, who made his remarks in a statement responding to Monday's bombing, could not be reached to clarify his call. But it could be informed by a growing distrust of Nigeria's military by many northerners.
The country's two main political parties even have accused each other of supporting the Islamic insurgency for ulterior motives.
Jonathan said last year that he believes there are Boko Haram sympathizers and supporters even in his Cabinet and high ranks of the military. That was before he dismissed his entire military command in January, followed by the defense minister.
The New York-based World Policy Institute has identified northern politicians from both main parties who it says supported Boko Haram or were victims of extortion by the extremists.
Some politicians have accused members of the military of colluding with Boko Haram, feeding the network information and arms, so that they can continue to steal from war coffers.
And some northern politicians say that keeping the insurgency going is a way to weaken the north as Nigeria gears up for elections in February 2015 that are shaping up as the biggest challenge to confront the governing People's Democratic Power since it won power in 1999 to end decades of military dictatorship.
Jonathan, a Christian from a minority tribe in the south, is expected to contend despite opposition even from within his own party, breaking an unwritten rule to alternate the presidency between a Christian southerner and a Muslim northerner.
In a country where relations between Muslims and Christians can be fraught and sometimes escalate into bloodshed, the 5-year-old insurgency is encouraging extremists from both religions and widening the gulf as never before.
The spiritual leader of Nigeria's more than 85 million Muslims said on Sunday that there is no plot to Islamize the country, where another 85 million are Christians.
“Nobody can Islamize Nigeria. If Allah wanted, he would have made everybody Muslims, so also with Christianity,” said Sa'ad Abubakar, the sultan of Sokoto. Abubakar is a common surname in Nigeria.
He said he hoped the government would take note of a stern statement last week from Jama'atu Nasril Islam, the country's biggest Muslim organization, which is headed by the sultan. It accused the military, which is notorious for human rights abuses, of killing Muslims “indiscriminately in the guise of fighting terrorism.”
Jama'atu Nasril Islam alleged there is “a hidden grand agenda to destabilize Muslims in Nigeria.”
For his part, Jonathan has said the Islamic uprising is a plot to destabilize his administration.
Transforming Nigeria into an Islamic state is Boko Haram's stated mission. It says that establishing Shariah law will halt the endemic corruption that keeps 70 percent of Nigerians impoverished while an elite lives in obscene luxury off oil proceeds.
