How can terrorists organize, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it”? This question was raised by President Muhammadu Buhari when he visited the Kuje Medium Custodial Centre, Abuja attacked by a band of terrorists.
Mystified that a very sensitive facility at the seat of the government could be so brazenly compromised, he sought to know the number of security personnel on duty during the attack, how many of them were armed, and what they did to forestall it among others.
A common thread runs through all these; had the various security agencies effectively done their jobs, it would have been impossible for the terrorists to succeed. So what really happened: a failure of intelligence, dereliction of duty or conspiracy of some sort?
One could read Buhari’s disappointment with the inability of the country’s security architecture to square up to the challenges of the attack. Perhaps, the information he requires will only aid in determining the level of culpability of the various security agencies to that national disgrace.
That was the story of the Kuje Medium Custodial Centre, Abuja as it succumbed to the onslaughts of a group of terrorists. Accounts of the attack vary. But terrorists numbering about 300, armed with sophisticated weapons attacked the facility at about 10 pm last Tuesday.
It is still hazy how they manoeuvred the various security checks before getting to the usually well-fortified facility. Some accounts have it that they separately converged there on foot with their weapons concealed only to take the facility by surprise.
They blew open the central gate and the perimeter fence with high calibre explosives to gain entry. They proceeded straight to the cells of Boko Haram detainees calling them by names and seeing to it that they all left in an operation estimated to have lasted three hours.
By the time the dust settled, an official of the NSCDC, three terrorists and four inmates lost their lives according to the spokesman of Nigeria Correctional Services.
Both the Minister of Defence and the interior ministry placed the blame on Boko Haram insurgents. They based this on available records, the pattern of the attack and the escape of all the 64 Boko Haram insurgents held in the facility.
But the Islamic State West Africa Province ISWAP added a new dimension to the theory of possible masterminds. In a 30-second video, ISWAP claimed responsibility for the attack even as those freed were commanders and members of the Boko Haram sect.
If the claim by ISWAP is correct, could it be the beginning of a new alliance between the two terror groups? And what does the alliance of two fundamentalist religious groups bent on institutionalizing a theocratic state portend for the country?
Boko Haram and ISWAP share the same doctrinaire promptings. While Boko Haram is poised to impose an Islamic state in Nigeria, ISWAP’s territorial coverage targets the West African sub-region. Their difference only lies in the scope of their weird ideological state coverage.
Increasing association of Boko Haram and ISWAP with acts of terrorism in parts of the country is beginning to send dangerous signals especially given claims by the government on its purported success in the war against terrorism.
For a government that claimed technical defeat of Boko Haram insurgency after three months in the saddle, the continued escapades of the group a few months to the end of the regime is a sad measure of the success of that war. The rising association of Boko Haram and ISWAP with acts of terrorism in areas outside their traditional strongholds should be a matter of serious concern. It increases the suspicion of a hidden agenda.
A few weeks ago, the federal government had also blamed ISWAP for the massacre of 40 innocent worshippers at St Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State. Many others received varying degrees of injury in that wicked, dastardly and inexplicable attack.
One question that has come to agitate minds in the face of these terrorists’ attacks on institutions and persons is the issue of motive. ISWAP or Boko Haram attacked the Kuje Centre to free their commanders and member possibly to give their weird religious agenda a further boost. ISWAP could not have had any other reason for attacking the Catholic Church at Owo except to actualize its religious agenda.
Questions are also being raised on the escalating abduction and killing of Catholic priests from their churches across the country. Could the abductions and killings be part of the agenda of the terrorists to silence the church and make it easy for the imposition of their brand of religious ideology? Why the focus on the Catholic Church?
These issues are raised because they constitute the instances cited by five United States of America US senators for asking President Joe Biden to re-enlist Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. Nigeria was delisted last year.
But in the petition, the senators cited the massacre at the Owo Catholic Church and others arguing that such killings have become too familiar for Christians in Africa’s most populous country. That is the perception of foreigners of the situation in the country. The attribution of responsibility for the Kuje attack to Boko Haram and ISWAP will definitely reinforce this perception given their weird religious agenda.
Do the terror groups really have the need to attack the facility to free their members given government’s policy of de-radicalization and re-absorption of their so- called repentant members? Or could it be that the facility easily succumbed to the insurgents’ firepower due to the conspiratorial and collaborative efforts of such insiders?
The Kuje incident highlights the pitfalls in government policy on de-radicalization and re-absorption of touted repentant terrorists. We face the danger of the Taliban strategy in Afghanistan if the ease with which terrorists compromise national institutions and installations is not quickly halted.