A human rights group has "traced the recurrent religious violence in the country to the total lack of political will on the part of the Federal and state governments to charge perpetrators of all the previous religious riots to court to serve as deterrent." Western leaders should take note. But they won't. And so Sharia supremacists holding the same values as those held by the Boko Haram group will continue to operate freely in the West.
Boko Haram Update: "Sectarian violence spreads, 157 feared dead in Borno, Kano," by Njadvara Musa, Ali Garba, Terhemba Daka, Adamu Abuh and Auwal Ahmad in Nigeria's The Guardian, July 28 (thanks to Skydeexie):
THE sectarian violence, which broke out in Bauchi on Sunday, has spread to Borno and Kano yesterday, claiming over 157 lives.
In Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, over 154 people were killed when armed members of the Islamic fundamentalists sect, Boko Haram, led by Mohammed Yusuf, a cleric, attacked the police headquarters around 10.00 p.m. and burnt 12 offices and quarters of the police and 11 patrol and personal vehicles.
However, the timely intervention of mobile policemen limited the casualty figure in Kano to three.
The Islamic fundamentalists were alleged to be fighting against those who have adopted western values....
Out of the 154 people killed, whose bodies littered the Post Office-Airport Road, there were over 115 members of the sect that used swords, bows and arrows, sticks and petrol bombs in attacking the Police Headquarters.
The police, which were taken by surprise on how the armed sect members got entry into the Police Headquarters, burnt the house of the commander of the joint border patrol and moved to the prison, killing one of the prison warders at the gate, and set all the inmates free.
As the prison inmates fled, some militants, however, abducted and took hostage of Ahmed Silkida, the correspondent of Daily Trust, alleging that he had betrayed the sect by dressing and keeping his bearded face like them without protecting their interest of fighting the Borno State government and its security agents.
In a telephone interview with The Guardian yesterday, Silkida said: "I am right now in the hands of the sect members. You should pray that the commander would release me because they are alleging that I betrayed their mission of waging a jihad against the state government and the Izala religious group"....
The Guardian also learnt that the targets of the fundamentalists are government lodges, Operation Flush checkpoints in Maiduguri and Jere metropolis, Police Headquarters and leaders of the Izala religious groups and their mosques located in various parts of Maiduguri.
Confirming the killing of over 154 people, Col. Ben Ahanotu, the commander of Operation Flush II, in a telephone interview said: "Yes, we have got them and gone with their bows and arrows and sticks. The next military action against these armed religious sect, is to destroy their operational points and areas that pose serious threat to lives and property."...
As at 3.00 a.m. yesterday, a band of militants comprising nationals of neighbouring Chad had stormed the headquarters of the Wudil Divisional Police Station with the intent of disarming the policemen on duty....
A leader of the fundamentalist who carried out the attack at the Wudil Police Station, Abdulmumuni Ibrahim Mohammed, gave an insight into their motive, saying that the attacks were aimed at the elite who had embraced western values.
Mohammed, who hails from Nasarawa State and claim to have attended secondary school, also expressed opposition to the use of the 1999 Constitution to govern the country as well as urged the implementation of the Sharia legal code.
Following the crisis in Bauchi, the Assistant Inspector-General of Police (AIG) in charge of Zone 12, Bauchi, Moses Anegbode, has described the Boko Haram as a criminal group who are parading themselves in the name of religion.
Addressing a press conference yesterday in Bauchi, Anegbode said Boko Haram was a threat to peace .
The AIG disclosed that 39 of the Boko Haram were killed in a confrontation in a joint security operation last Sunday in Bauchi while 176 of them were arrested and 15 injured.
He added that a Lance Corporal in the Army and two policemen were killed in the operations against the group.
According to him, the security operatives went after members of Boko Haram after they attacked a police station in Dutse Tanshi and opened fire during attempts to arrest them at their various hideouts in the Federal Low Cost Estate and Fadama Mada areas.
Anegbode said that in Maiduguri on that same Sunday, some members of the group despite the heavy security, came to a police station on a suicide mission with three motorcycles and sped towards the gate and set it ablaze.
He stated: " They forbid anything western, yet their leader has an array of western materials in their position and their usage. Even the phone, SUVs; I wonder if they were made by him. They are notorious for kidnappings, raping, intimidation and molestation and known to be anti-establishment,"...
Meanwhile, Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) yesterday called for urgent implementation of a comprehensive reforms of the nation's intelligence community and the Nigeria police by the Federal Government to prevent the intermittent orgy of violence unleashed by religious fanatics in the country.
The human rights body in a statement endorsed by its national co-ordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, condemned the violence unleashed by the members of the Boko Haram sect in Bauchi State at the weekend even as it called for a transparent judicial commission of inquiry to unravel the remote and immediate causes of the blood-bath and the prosecution of all perpetrators.
The group traced the recurrent religious violence in the country to the total lack of political will on the part of the Federal and state governments to charge perpetrators of all the previous religious riots to court to serve as deterrent....
No comments:
Post a Comment