BOMB EXPLOSION DESTROYS OHANAEZE SECRETARIATE(ENUGU STATE NIGERIA)

There is tension in Enugu State(Nigeria) following a bomb explosion at the national headquarters of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo at No. 7 Park Avenue, G.R.A Enugu, destroyed parts of the building and some infrastructures.

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BOKO HARAM STRIKES AGAIN IN MAIDUGURI (Northern Nigeria)...insurgency

                       

Islamist Sect Boko Haram has struck again in Nigeria, this time, they hit Maiduguri a major northeastern city around midnight on Sunday. Reports suggest fierce fighting is taking place on the outskirts of the city and the military is carrying out airstrikes. Maiduguri would be a major prize for the militants as they attempt to impose an Islamic state. Sunday’s attack would be the third time Boko Haram has committed religious violence there. WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW:

                                 

ISLAMIST SECT BOKO HARAM IS HAMPERED BY COWARDS WITHIN THE ARMY...Col Sambo (Rtd)

Nigeria’s campaign against Islamist Boko Haram insurgents is being hampered by “cowards” within the armed forces, National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) said yesterday in London.

Boko Haram’s bloody uprising to carve out an Islamic caliphate has taken much of Nigeria’s northeast.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of cowards. We have people who use every excuse in this world not to fight,” Col. Dasuki told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank in the British capital.

But, he stressed, “there is no high-level conspiracy within the army not to end the insurgency.”

Col. Dasuki denied that the army was under-equipped, as critics have asserted, calling this an “excuse.” He said reinforcements had been sent in to retake Baga, the Borno town seized by the sect in  a January 3 raid, which reportedly led to the death of over 2,000 people but which the military authorities put at no more than 150.

Col. Dasuki added: “That wasn’t that much of a multinational task force; it was by name (only), because they were all supposed to be physically there,” when in fact most were not.

He added that the headquarters was being moved to the nearby Chadian capital N’Djamena, but that “Nigerians don’t see what the use is” of the regional force.

Defending the funding of the military, Col. Dasuki said that the list of equipment lost in Baga included six armoured cars with 4,000 rounds of heavy ammunition in each, as well as artillery pieces.

“Anyone who is saying that our soldiers are not well armed is not telling the truth. We had a lot of cowards, and it turned out there was a problem in the recruitment process … There were a lot of people who joined because they wanted a job, not because they wanted a career in the military. These are the people who ran away.”

WE KILLED THE PEOPLE OF BAGA...Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau

                          
We killed the people of Baga. We indeed killed them, as our Lord instructed us in His Book said Shekau in the video message that was posted on YouTube. “We will not stop,  This is only a tip of the ice-berg.”

What i do not understand is what this people stand to gain from all these killings, this will not last forever, some day Boko Haram will meet their end, and what will all these killings be for?

Watch the video below.

                       

INSURGENCY!!! BOKO HARAM ATTACKS "DEADLIEST MASSACRE" IN HISTORY

HUNDREDS of bodies — too many to count — remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International suggested on Friday is the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.

Mike Omeri, the government spokesman on the insurgency, said fighting continued Friday for Baga, a town on the border with Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on January 3 and attacked again on Wednesday.

“Security forces have responded rapidly, and have deployed significant military assets and conducted air strikes against militant targets,” Omeri said in a statement.

District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents.

EXTREMISTS: Teen girl given to Boko Haram as suicide bomber

This photo from April 2013 shows a young girl standing amid the burned ruins of Baga, Nigeria. (AP Photo / Haruna Umar file ) Source: AP

“The human carnage perpetrated by Boko Haram terrorists in Baga was enormous,” Muhammad Abba Gava, a spokesman for poorly armed civilians in a defence group that fights Boko Haram, told The Associated Press.

He said the civilian fighters gave up on trying to count all the bodies. “No one could attend to the corpses and even the seriously injured ones who may have died by now,” Gava said.

An Amnesty International statement said there are reports the town was razed and as many as 2,000 people killed.

If true, “this marks a disturbing and bloody escalation of Boko Haram’s ongoing onslaught,” said Daniel Eyre, Nigeria researcher for Amnesty International.

In Washington, U.S. State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki condemned the attacks.

“We urge Nigeria and its neighbours to take all possible steps to address the urgent threat of Boko Haram. Even in the face of these horrifying attacks, terrorist organisations like Boko Haram must not distract Nigeria from carrying out credible and peaceful elections that reflect the will of the Nigerian people,” Psaki said in a statement.

This photo from April 2013 shows a photo of a man trying to cool down another man burnt during fighting in Baga, Nigeria. Picture: AP Photo/Haruna Umar. Source: AP

The previous bloodiest day in the uprising involved soldiers gunning down unarmed detainees freed in a March 14, 2014, attack on Giwa military barracks in Maiduguri city. Amnesty said then that satellite imagery indicated more than 600 people were killed that day.

The 5-year insurgency killed more than 10,000 people last year alone, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations. More than a million people are displaced inside Nigeria and hundreds of thousands have fled across its borders into Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria.

Emergency workers said this week they are having a hard time coping with scores of children separated from their parents in the chaos of Boko Haram’s increasingly frequent and deadly attacks.

           Another photo from April 2013 shows the ruins of burnt out houses in Baga village in Nigeria. AP Photo/Haruna                                                                                                       Umar. Source: AP

Just seven children have been reunited with parents in Yola, capital of Adamawa state, where about 140 others have no idea if their families are alive or dead, said Sa’ad Bello, the co-ordinator of five refugee camps in Yola.

He said he was optimistic that more reunions will come as residents return to towns that the military has retaken from extremists in recent weeks.

Suleiman Dauda, 12, said he ran into the bushes with neighbours when extremists attacked his village, Askira Uba, near Yola last year.

“I saw them kill my father, they slaughtered him like a ram. And up until now I don’t know where my mother is,” he told The Associated Press at Daware refugee camp in Yola.

This photo from November 2014 shows children displaced after attacks by Boko Haram playing in the camp of internal displaced people. AP Photo/Sunday Alamba. Source: AP

BOKO HARAM: NEW ASSAULT ON BAGA TOWN

Boko Haram crisis: Nigeria's Baga town hit by new assault

Boko Haram controls large swathes of territory in north-eastern Nigeria

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Nigeria's militant Islamists have carried out a second attack on the key north-eastern town of Baga, an official has told the BBC.

Boko Haram fighters burnt down almost the entire town on Wednesday, after over-running a military base on Saturday, Musa Alhaji Bukar said.

Bodies lay strewn on Baga's streets, amid fears that some 2,000 people had been killed in the raids, he added.

Boko Haram launched a military campaign in 2009 to create an Islamic state.

It has taken control of many towns and villages in north-eastern Nigeria in the last year.

The conflict has displaced at least 1.5 million people, while more than 2,000 were killed last year.

Abandoned

On Monday, lawmaker Maina Maaji Lawan said Boko Haram controlled 70% of Borno state, which is worst-affected by the insurgency.

Mr Bukar, a senior government official in the area, said that fleeing residents told him that the town, which had a population of about 10,000, was now "virtually non-existent".

"It has been burnt down," he said.

Government troops were overpowered during Saturday's raid on Baga

The group has torched many towns and villages in northern Nigeria

Those who fled reported that they had been unable to bury the dead, and corpses littered the town's streets, he said.

Boko Haram was effectively in control of Baga and 16 neighbouring towns, Mr Bukar said.

Government troops abandoned the military base in Baga on Saturday, when the militants launched an assault.

It hosts the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), made up of troops from Nigeria, Chad and Niger, although the BBC understands there were only Nigerian soldiers there at the time of the attack.

Set up in 1998 to fight trans-border crime in the Lake Chad region, the force more recently took on Boko Haram.

Thousands have fled Baga - many to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, and others to Chad.

A large number reportedly drown as they crossed Lake Chad following Saturday's raid.

Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno and two neighbouring states in 2013, vowing to defeat the militants.

However, Boko Haram has stepped up attacks since then, and there are fears that many people in the area will not be able to vote in next month's general elections because of the conflict.

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Source: BBC NEWS

INSURGENCY!!! GOVERNOR'S OF STATES AFFECTED BY BOKO HARAM ASKS FOR MORE TROOPS BEFORE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

ABUJA (Reuters) - Facing an increasingly violent Islamist insurgency, governors from three states in northeast Nigeria asked President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday to deploy extra troops to secure their regions before next month's presidential election.

With less than six weeks to go before the polls, officials are concerned the northeast may be so destabilised by Boko Haram militants that millions of people are prevented from voting in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the worst affected of Nigeria's 36 states.

"We need more troops. The troops on the ground we have in our various states are not enough," Yobe state governor Ibrahim Gaidem told journalists at the presidential villa after meeting with Jonathan. "We appealed to the president to deploy additional troops with full equipment to tame the situation."

The presidency was not immediately available to comment, but a presidential source told Reuters Jonathan had accepted the request in principle. The source did not give further details.

Security will be a major election issue in the country with the biggest economy and population in Africa. The electoral commission says more than a million Nigerians displaced by the Islamist insurgency in the northeast may not be able to vote on Feb. 14 unless the law is changed to enable them to do so away from their home regions.

Parliament is considering such a law. Jonathan's main opponent is Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim from the north who, as a former military leader, is seen as tough on security.

The five-year-old insurgency, which is trying to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate, has killed thousands of people and uprooted more than a million. The militants have also kidnapped hundreds of children: 200 girls snatched from a school in the village of Chibok last April remain missing.

The military seems ill-equipped and overstretched against a determined foe. Boko Haram killed dozens of civilians and at least 11 soldiers when it took control of a Nigerian town and army base on the shores of Lake Chad, at the borders with Chad and Cameroon, at the weekend.

Refugees aside, it may be too insecure in some parts of the northeast to hold an election at all, officials say, and many foreign observers will not get security clearance to go up there.

But the governors of the three states under a military state of emergency were confident the polls would happen everywhere.

Gaidem said "Definitely in all those areas where the insurgency exist, elections will hold," 

NOT AGAIN!!! BOKO HARAM SEIZES MILITARY BASE IN NIGERIA

Kano (Nigeria) Suspected Boko Haram militants have seized a military base outside the Nigerian town of Baga near Lake Chad after engaging troops in a fierce battle that lasted several hours, witnesses said on Sunday 4th of Jan.2015.

"They (the militants) overwhelmed the troops and forced them to abandon the base which the gunmen took over," local resident Usman Danssubdu told AFP after fleeing to neighbouring Chad following Saturday's raids.

The base is used by the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), which was established in 1998 to battle cross-border crime but whose mandate was expanded to fighting Boko Haram when the Islamist group emerged.

The force is made up of troops from Nigeria as well as Niger and Chad.

Hundreds of fear-stricken residents from Baga and five other Nigerian towns and villages have poured into neighbouring Chad to escape Boko Haram raids on their homes on the shores of Lake Chad, witnesses said.

Residents of Kauyen Kuros, Mile 3, Mile 4, Baga, Doron-Baga and Bundaram fled across the lake in fishing boats and canoes into Chad following hours-long attacks on Saturday by hundreds of militants from the Islamist group.

"We are now seeking refuge in Gubuwa, Kangallam and Kaiga villages inside Chad near the border with Nigeria," Dansubdu told AFP by telephone from Gubuwa.

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen late Saturday also raided the town of Babban Gida, 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Damaturu, the capital of neighbouring Yobe state, according to residents, who said they destroyed several buildings.

Source: Yahoo News

OMG!!! A 13 YEAR OLD FEMALE SUICIDE BOMBER.

The girl, who identified herself as Zaharau Babangida, narrated how her own father had made her terrorist.

According to Vanguard, she disclosed:
“It began one day when my father took my mum and I to a forest in Bauchi where we met people claiming to be working for God… In the Bauchi forest I met some other girls who I guessed were my age mate and their leader told us to give our lives to God and enjoy the bounties of heaven.”

“I was not moved by the soul searching preaching of bounties in the heaven and it was at this point, their leader resorted to threat and intimidation to obtain my consent. We were shown a deep hole where the leader of the group threatened to bury us alive at a point if any of us refused to play along, and at another time he picked a big gun and threatened to shoot anyone who fails to obey his command.

Speaking on Wednesday, December 24, with journalists, the teenager continued:
“It was at this point my father stepped forward to persuade me to play along, and told me to prepare to die as martyr and clear the way for him to join me soon.”
Zaharau said that the men in the bush had continuously preached to her and other girls about suicide mission, Premium Times adds. She refused to accept the ideas introduced, but was threatened that she would be buried alive.

“I was in the bush when the people some who looks like Arabs and some huge black men told me that did I know what is suicide mission, that is one killing himself? I said no I don’t know, they explained it to me and said that if I did plus reciting Sura Albakara I will straight go to Paradise.
“I declined and told them I will not do it, they now told me that they would dig a hole and bury me alive because that is what they do to all women who refuse to adhere to their demands, and they said they meant what they said, I now complied.”
Thus the terrified had no other choice but agree to go on Kano mission, together with two other young girls.


The 13-year-old narrated what happened on the fateful day of the bloody Kano attack, which killed those 2 girls and 4 residents. According to Zaharau, they had a special guide who took them to the place. “I and two other girls were conveyed to Kano and quartered at the outskirt of the city by a man I could hardly remember his name, and this same man conveyed all of us to the market square and deployed us at strategic positions at Kwari market on the day we struck.” She said she had refused to commit the crime and follow the other girls. But the two soon they blew themselves up and left Zaharau injured. “I was taken aback when my partners were shattered to pieces barely a second after they detonated. I then rushed out of the scene to pick a commercial rickshaw to a hospital in Dawanau area of the city for medical treatment, and doctors were already attending to me when the driver of the Keke NAPEP resurfaced and showed me a metal object and requested to know whether it was mine of which I answered in affirmative.

“I told him the object he dangled before me is a bomb and its mine, and in no time armed soldiers picked me from my sick bed to their headquarters.” Meanwhile Kano State Commissioner of Police, Aderele Shinaba, revealed that one of the girls’ guides had been arrested. He however didn’t say what had happened to Zaharau’s father.