We, as a society, have had our fair share of instability and even wars in our chequered history, including t
We, as a society, have had our fair share of instability and even wars in our chequered history, including the sacking of Birnin Ngazargamu by the jihadists in 1808, Rabih’s invasion and occupation in 1893 and the Maitatsine riots of the 1980s. In all these crises, destructive and vicious as they were, the wars did not degenerate into killing of innocent souls, targeting of public recreational centres, places of worship in a sustained and protracted manner, as we sadly witness today. – Kashim Shettima, Executive Governor, Borno State
She had narrated why Budum bled, Gwaneri wept and London Chiki keeled over but Saratu Usman could not put into words why her husband and daughter are lying six feet under the ground. She simply cried every time she tried.
Hunched by the hearth in her tiny backyard, she fans the dying embers with hands that are irredeemably wiry and gnarled. Despite the seeming lifelessness of her limbs, they hover delicately, quivering like moth wings over the grate. Her eyes are fixed on the fireplace and as it crackles back to life, it cast desultory glows that makes her eyes gleam, in an outrage of bitterness.
No one sees what she sees neither can anyone understand her buried narrative better than she does but against the firelight; a faint glimmer steals into her face, like the feral nuance of a cat, maddened by separation from its young.
Her lips purse as if she would speak but instead, a great glob of spit hangs there, glittering; before she lets it fall. The spit is what sizzles like cheese over freshly roasted yam. It articulates the widow’s pregnant silences thus giving tenor to the grief she’s been cradling since she lost her husband and only child to a gun battle between the Joint Task Force and Islamic militant group, Boko Haram.
“God will reward the one whose bullets felled my poor husband and child. Layi (her daughter) was barely three. Her father wanted to go out and collect money from a debtor but she insisted on following him. I tried to make her stay but she screamed louder…you see, her father, he was very weak with her. He told me to dress her up and took her along. He said they won’t be long but they never got back…when I went out to look for them, I found my husband and child in a bloody heap by the roadside. The money they went out to collect littered the ground about them,” said Usman.
Through her narration, Usman shed the sad tears of a widow who was orphaned at birth and childless in her twilight. “I have nowhere else to go. I used to work for my late husband until he married me. I know no family from my father and mother’s bloodline,” she said thus lamenting her inability to relocate despite the very sad memories her current neighbourhood accords her.
Unlike Usman, Bilkis Aliyu has chosen to relocate. “I am not going to wait here till death finds me and my children,” she said. The 28-year-old single mother and resident of Kaleri has suffered the death of a loved one in her past. That loved one was a distant relative to whom she served as guardian. Her name was Sufi and she was gunned down in the post-election violence that engulfed Zonkwa, in the South of Kaduna on April 18, 2011.
That sad incident hit too close to her marrow as Sufi happened to be her only surviving relative from her mother’s bloodline. “Now I have nobody. My father died when I was young and his family didn’t treat my mother right. When she took ill, nobody showed up to assist us with money or care and at her death, I was left alone with no money to my name or roof over my head. I was rescued from poverty and uncertainty by the widow of one of my late father’s friends. She tried to be my mother and got me married to someone she thought was a good man last year. Now she is dead and my husband has gone to live in Jebba with another woman. There is nothing for me here. I sell koko and bean cake and I can sell that anywhere. I am leaving this place. It’s not safe to live here anymore,” she said.
Like Usman and Aliyu, not a few residents of Budum, Kaleri, Gwaneri and other volatile parts of Maiduguri, Borno State, live in perpetual fear ever since the JTF and Boko Haram turned their erstwhile peaceful neighbourhoods into bloody battle fronts.
Many residents still rue the explosion that rocked the vicinity of the palace of the Shehu of Borno and Budum Market in Central Maiduguri on Saturday, July 23, 2011, when a bomb, ostensibly planted by Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group, went off. Targeted at a military patrol in the area, the bomb instantly wounded three soldiers of the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) deployed to Maiduguri to fish out members of the violent group.
The explosive reportedly claimed eight lives and wounded several other civilians. Amnesty International claims 23 other people died in its wake. Although they were not victims of the bomb explosion, they suffered a reprisal attack allegedly mounted by men of the JTF. The latter, due to frustration arising from their inability to easily identify and arrest members of Boko Haram sect, reportedly responded by shooting and killing people at random. Residents accused the JTF of using extreme force on residents of Budum community in reprisal attacks over their hurt colleagues. Following the bomb blast which occurred around 4 p.m, JTF soldiers allegedly set shops numbering over 42 ablaze and shot directly at shop owners and residents while they were fleeing the scene of the blasts.
According to eyewitness accounts, the soldiers conducted a house-to-house search, forcing men suspected to be above 18 years out of their homes before shooting them. Six cars with registration numbers AA495 JRE, AA126KDQ, AM96AMG, AA415NGL, DA314FST, and AE437 DKW were allegedly vandalised and burnt by the soldiers. Although JTF authorities vehemently denied the arson and killings, a visit to four affected families within the community revealed the interminable grief of families who allegedly lost their loved ones to the JTF’s onslaught.
Some of the casualties include the Late Mallam Goni Tijani,(55), Late Babakura Zakariya (18), Late Idris, and the woman in whose shop the improvised explosive device (IED) was planted.
Eyewitness accounts revealed that the soldiers invaded the home of Late Mallam Goni Tijani, 55, forced him out of his room and shot him to death right in front of his family members and children most of whom are below the age of six. His two shops were burnt leaving his two wives and 11 children with nothing to depend on.
The deceased’s aged father tearfully recounted how JTF soldiers dragged the deceased out of his mother’s room onto the streets. He knelt down, and pleaded with the soldiers to spare his life. He died on the spot after he was allegedly shot on the head, chest and waist by the soldiers. Severely wounded Baba Sani Mohammed, a shop owner at Budum Market, had to resort to receiving treatment in his home following a life-threatening gunshot injury said to have been inflicted on him by JTF soldiers while he was fleeing from the burning market.
According to Victoria Ohaeri, Programme Coordinator of the Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), similar alleged executions had taken place in suburban Kaleri community near Osas Private School. “Homes close to the site of the Kaleri blasts were raided and occupants allegedly murdered in cold blood,” she said.
Ohaeri said that this has resulted in a situation whereby “the Boko Haram on one side and the JTF on the other side are now equally yoked in the gory killings and myriad of security challenges facing the state. Their clashes have left hundreds dead on both sides. The presence of the JTF in Maiduguri has also polarised the state, pitching the haves against the have-nots. While the non-Muslims, persons engaged in formal employment and those living in the formal sections of the city insist on having military presence intensified in Maiduguri and environs, the inhabitants of slum and rural settlements such as Budum, Kaleri, Gomari and London Chiki are equally as vociferous in their call for the withdrawal of soldiers from the state.”
“House-to-house searches, brutalisation, unlawful arrests, killings and disappearances have been the operating practice in Maiduguri for some months now. Unless steps are taken to ensure that security forces operate within the law and respect human rights at all times, the next time Boko Haram attacks or kills a soldier, we are likely to see the same thing happen again,” said Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty International deputy director for Africa.
However, JTF’s field operation officer and spokesperson in Borno, Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, debunked the claims that soldiers in Maiduguri were targeting law-abiding members of the public. He described the claims as “baseless and uncalled for,” claiming that the army would never act in anyway detrimental to the peace of the state. Ebhaleme rather blamed members of the Boko Haram sect for planting explosives in residential areas, which he said were causes of the loss of lives and property of law-abiding civilians.
Ebhaleme was probably right; findings revealed that the bomb that exploded near a military checkpoint in Bulumkutu and injured at least four soldiers was said to have been dropped by a little boy. Residents confided that a boy allegedly dropped a polythene bag containing the explosive beside a huge billboard near the checkpoint but could not approach men of the JTF, apparently for fear of reprisals from members of Boko Haram.
“Nobody is safe anywhere anymore. We don’t feel safe even in our own homes,” lamented Abubakar Idris, an animal feed dealer resident in Kaleri. True; a harmless stroll across the street or quick dash to the neighbourhood grocer has often times resulted in gruesome deaths of unsuspecting adults and minors in the area. Series of coordinated attacks and sporadic gun wars between the JTF and Boko Haram has casted a very dark pall on a state that’s supposed to be Nigeria’s of “Home of Peace and Hospitality.” If anything, the current situation in Borno places it a thousand miles from its fabled state of warmth and tranquility.
The fear of Boko Haram
The group’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, meaning ‘People
Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” It earned its nickname from the teachings of its founder Mohammed Yussuf in the early 2000s. In the restive northeastern city of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
Yusuf argued that western education, or ‘boko,’ had brought nothing but poverty and suffering to the region and was therefore forbidden, or ‘haram,’ in Islam. He began peacefully, mostly preaching and quickly gained a following among disaffected young men in the northeast. But his anti-establishment rhetoric and hints that Boko Haram was building an arsenal of weapons also caught the attention of the authorities.
In 2009, the police clamped down on sect members who were ignoring a law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets. That sparked a furious backlash. Police stations and government offices in Borno were burned to the ground, and hundreds of the ground and hundreds of criminals released in a prison break, as the violence spread across northern Nigeria. The government and army reacted with force: Yusuf was captured and short dead in police custody. Five days of fighting left some 800 people dead.
Boko Haram leaders still cite Yusuf’s death as one of the main factors driving the insurgency. The group remains fiercely anti-government and anti-authority and resentful of the decades of corrupt, poor governance that have impoverished its home region.
The group’s headquarters and mosque were located in the city until they were left in ruins by a 2009 military assault in response to an uprising. The remains of the mosque are still there now, one of many signs of crisis in Maiduguri.
Boko Haram went dormant for about a year after the military assault, which killed some 800 people, but returned in 2010 with a series of assassinations before moving on to increasingly sophisticated bombings, including suicide attacks.
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, is still seen as its home base, though it has extended its attacks into other cities, including the capital Abuja and Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, Damaturu, Yobe State, among others.
At first, Boko Haram was involved mostly in perpetrating sectarian violence. Its adherents participated in simple attacks on Christians using clubs, machetes and small arms. Boko Haram came to international attention following serious outbreaks of inter-communal violence in 2008 and 2009 that resulted in thousands of deaths. By late 2010, Boko Haram had added Molotov cocktails and simple Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to its tactical repertoire.
How violence has changed Maiduguri
Islamic faithful observe the evening Maghreb prayer – and then have to go straight on to the Isha, the late evening prayer, because Maiduguri has to live under a strict 7.p.m. to 6a.m. curfew. From the mosque, residents hurry back home to their firmly padlocked houses.
Every resident lives in constant fear in the wake of a series of violent and devastating attacks including drive-by shootings and bombings in their once peaceful neighbourhoods. Very few residents have the courage to discuss the pervasive state of insecurity in the state in public.
“You don’t know who is who. That is why everybody is being very careful. Nobody discusses Boko Haram in public anymore because there have been instances whereby some people have been killed for voicing their opinions about the group’s activities,” said Halisu, a crafts dealer.
It gets even worse; the city’s economy which is basically driven by the informal sector and thus has no closing hours is perpetually on the downside as commercial transporters, vendors, shop keepers, property speculators and even beggars no longer engage in business hustle until late into the night. Most businesses close shop by 7 p.m. and property and as a result many of the residents lament of having incurred serious losses.
Babban Layi, Maiduguri’s longstanding commercial centre, which simply means “a wide street,” used to be a Mecca of sort for shoppers and dealers in textile, electronics, clothing, and household items. At the market, Lebanese and Chadian merchants jostled daily alongside low-tech con men and pickpockets all hoping to get a slice of the bulging pockets of money charily carried around by shoppers and dealers of various nationalities and walks of life.
Before the violence, overloaded trucks, known locally as giwa-giwa, transported goods from Babban Layi to neighbouring countries such as Chad and Cameroon and even to distant places like Sudan and the Central African Republic regularly. However, this once thriving regional trading hub is now almost empty as trading activities have declined by the incessant bomb blasts and gun wars that have become the lot of the society. For many months now, merchants, menial workers and the truck drivers among others have been struggling to make ends meet.
Fear pervades the entire city; classrooms have been burnt and reduced to shards of broken glass and pile of cement, but pupils and teachers remain, squeezing into parts of the building still standing for lessons. Outside the school walls, residents who remain push on, worshipping at mosques or churches, including those protected by military deployments and razor wire; many more are visiting markets even as they cautiously avoid malevolent soldiers they accuse of maltreatment.
Maiduguri in retrospect
Legend has it that Maiduguri evolved from a grand conquest in pursuit of peace and humaneness.
Three of the principal features of the capital were the wide roads and drainage, the magnificent shade trees, cleanliness and orderliness. The forest of neem trees makes Maiduguri today the best shaded town in Africa. In fact, until recently, Maiduguri was regarded as the cleanest and most orderly state capital in Nigeria.
Modern Maiduguri actually comprises the twin towns of Yerwa and Maiduguri. In 1907 Yerwa (whose name is derived from an Arabic expression meaning “quenching the thirst,” referring to the waters of the nearby river) was founded on the site of the hamlet of Kalwa and was named by Shehu Bukar Garbai as the new traditional capital of the Kanuri people, replacing Kukawa, 80 miles north-northeast, the former capital of the Bornu kingdom. Meanwhile, the market village of Maiduguri, just to the south, was selected by the British to replace nearby Maifoni as their military headquarters; and, in 1908, they built a residency in what then became the capital of British Bornu. The combined city, locally called Yerwa, was divided into the urban district of Yerwa and the rural district of Maiduguri in 1957; but outside Borno, both political units are now known simply as Maiduguri.
The arrival of the railway in 1964 reinforced Maiduguri’s importance as the chief commercial centre of northeastern Nigeria. Livestock, cattle hides, goatskins and sheepskins, finished leather products, dried fish, crocodile skins (the last two brought from Lake Chad), peanuts (groundnuts), and gum arabic are the city’s chief exports; but there is also considerable local trade in sorghum, millet, corn (maize), rice, cotton, and indigo. There is a large cattle ranch at nearby Gombole, and poultry farming has been introduced in the surrounding countryside. The Monday market at Yerwa, a tradition brought from Kukawa, is the largest in the state; most goods are transported by donkey and, likewise in centuries-old fashion, by oxen owned by the semi-nomadic Shuwa Arabs.
Though the capital’s valid name is Yerwa, the name, Maiduguri, is more common in political and commercial circles outside Borno. History is replete with anecdotes that the capital of Borno or Kanuri Empire at any point in time always has the touch or ingredients of a well planned city with Maiduguri not exception. To this a commentator writes, “……what visitor to Maiduguri whose vitality is so apparent at every turn can ever forget its charm, its grandeur, its exotic appeal? What visitor can be indifferent to the stately sweep of the Dandal; the magnificence of the Shehu’s palace, the imposing grandeur of the state secretariat; the enchanting landscape of the lake Chad Hotel, the glamour of the imposing Maiduguri International Hotel; the fascinating architecture of the celebrated Du Putron houses; the romantic Kyarimi Park, the formidable verdant personality of a clan of one million neems; Borno’s fantastic durbar fanfares, the exotic scene of Shuwa Arabs riding their oxen to the Monday market…? The catalogue is endless!”
However, recent developments have laid waste to the beauty of peace and hospitality that the state was once noted for. According to the Kashim Shettima, the State Governor, “The circumstances that led to the current unfortunate situation in our state and neighbouring areas arose from long years of neglect and structural violence on our people by successive governments, which had failed to address their deplorable existential conditions. The retreating state, dwindling economic resources, visionless ruling class steeped in conspicuous consumption in the midst of abundant poverty created a fertile environment for Boko Haram to thrive. The violence meted out on our people by social conditions such as poverty, exclusion, want, oppression and fear is more grievous than physical violence.
Any society experiencing these levels of deprivation, he said, cannot be said to be peaceful. The transition from physical to structural violence is often imperceptible but predictable. “In more specific terms, we argue that the low-level insurgency playing out in the streets of our towns and villages across the nation, but especially in Borno State, is a direct consequence of a combination of factors, chief among which are youth unemployment and under-employment, acute poverty, political thuggery, endemic corruption, proliferation of arms and ammunition augmented by the peculiar geo-political setting of Borno State neighbouring three countries of Chad, Cameroun and Niger, a sub-region generally known for political upheaval and insecurity, and above all religious extremism and terrorism,” said Shettima.
Dreams of a silver lining
Despite this very sad situation, the authorities in Maiduguri remain hopeful that things will get better. According to Governor Shettima, “Borno was a model, a standard of what was good in the African culture, a pride of the Blackman everywhere and our history was compared to that of the Ottomans and Sa’adi Morocco, some of the oldest and most impressive dynasties in the world. Borno as a society was, and remains, a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic as well as multi-religious society. This heterogeneity often referred to as a melting pot was sustained by a tolerance of dissenting views.”
He blamed the current state of insecurity on the “attempt to impose the opinion of a small group on a larger society, a situation which clearly abridges the freedom to freely hold and express one’s opinion which is fundamental and inalienable in any given society.”
In the history of our society, our leaders had responded to the challenges of their day, similar in gravity, similar to the unfortunate situation we are undergoing today, with utmost sense of restraint and without recourse to violence. The response of the Borno leadership under Sheikh Muhammad El-Kanemi to the attack in Borno and allegations of un-Islamic practices at the beginning of the nineteenth century was clear, simple and straightforward. In his efforts to ensure peace, he carried out a series of theological, legal and political debates through letters with Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, and later with his son, Muhammad Bello. “We are Muslims and Muslims do not harm innocent souls, much less fellow Muslims; any interpretation or understanding of Islam which justifies the killing of innocent people is condemnable and should be rebuked in toto”.
At the backdrop of his passionate pick-me-up, the question many residents of Maiduguri want answered is: Will peace ever return to Maiduguri? This is surely one tough question for the governor to answer. Already, Governor Shettima has revealed his willingness to rekindle his people’s confidence in government claiming that he has embarked on numerous programmes of job creation, skills acquisition, poverty alleviation, empowerment and capacity building programmes.
“Specifically, government has compensated all victims of the recent crisis as submitted by the committee set up by government which collated the data…It has also purchased foodstuffs worth N2 billion and distributed same and collaborating with micro-finance banks to provide soft loans to our farmers and traders. The whole mantra is on the increase in yield and we intend to unleash the potential of our youths by investing N10 billion into the agricultural sector”.
The governor stated that his government has put in place a machinery to create 500,000 jobs to address grassroots socio-economic empowerment drive, total overhaul of the education sector, infrastructural renovation and improvements and putting in place quality assurance monitoring taskforce and enhancement of the feeding system to encourage children to attend and stay in school.
“In addition, vocational and farming skills acquisition centres are being provided and rehabilitated while all our dormant industries are receiving attention and very soon they will engage substantial number of the unemployed…The ultimate aim is to engage the pool of unemployed and redirect their energy to productive use while restoring their dignity and self-esteem. This way, some of the drivers of radicalisation will be eliminated,” he said.
Despite this glimmer of hope, the situation in Maiduguri is still pretty desperate. Recently, gunmen suspected to be members of the Boko Haram sect, commenced the burning and destruction of GSM masts and communication facilities in some areas of Maiduguri and neighbouring north eastern states.
To check the tide of violence and insecurity, gun-toting soldiers have set up numerous checkpoints and taken up positions outside telecom masts, police stations, churches and other high-profile locations that have previously been Boko Haram’s targets. The soldiers are there to protect the residents of Maiduguri even as the people seem coherent in their condemnation of the militarisation of the streets. They accuse the soldiers of torture and other human rights violations.
On the flipside, Boko Haram squads target soldiers and security agents with explosives, either in their fortified positions or in their patrol vehicles. After an attack, the soldiers storm neighbouring communities, and are said to indiscriminately molest and shoot the male occupants. The army denies this is happening – nevertheless, it is a recurring cry that is hard to ignore.
he sacking of Birnin Ngazargamu by the jihadists in 1808, Rabih’s invasion and occupation in 1893 and the Maitatsine riots of the 1980s. In all these crises, destructive and vicious as they were, the wars did not degenerate into killing of innocent souls, targeting of public recreational centres, places of worship in a sustained and protracted manner, as we sadly witness today. – Kashim Shettima, Executive Governor, Borno State
She had narrated why Budum bled, Gwaneri wept and London Chiki keeled over but Saratu Usman could not put into words why her husband and daughter are lying six feet under the ground. She simply cried every time she tried.
Hunched by the hearth in her tiny backyard, she fans the dying embers with hands that are irredeemably wiry and gnarled. Despite the seeming lifelessness of her limbs, they hover delicately, quivering like moth wings over the grate. Her eyes are fixed on the fireplace and as it crackles back to life, it cast desultory glows that makes her eyes gleam, in an outrage of bitterness.
No one sees what she sees neither can anyone understand her buried narrative better than she does but against the firelight; a faint glimmer steals into her face, like the feral nuance of a cat, maddened by separation from its young.
Her lips purse as if she would speak but instead, a great glob of spit hangs there, glittering; before she lets it fall. The spit is what sizzles like cheese over freshly roasted yam. It articulates the widow’s pregnant silences thus giving tenor to the grief she’s been cradling since she lost her husband and only child to a gun battle between the Joint Task Force and Islamic militant group, Boko Haram.
“God will reward the one whose bullets felled my poor husband and child. Layi (her daughter) was barely three. Her father wanted to go out and collect money from a debtor but she insisted on following him. I tried to make her stay but she screamed louder…you see, her father, he was very weak with her. He told me to dress her up and took her along. He said they won’t be long but they never got back…when I went out to look for them, I found my husband and child in a bloody heap by the roadside. The money they went out to collect littered the ground about them,” said Usman.
Through her narration, Usman shed the sad tears of a widow who was orphaned at birth and childless in her twilight. “I have nowhere else to go. I used to work for my late husband until he married me. I know no family from my father and mother’s bloodline,” she said thus lamenting her inability to relocate despite the very sad memories her current neighbourhood accords her.
Unlike Usman, Bilkis Aliyu has chosen to relocate. “I am not going to wait here till death finds me and my children,” she said. The 28-year-old single mother and resident of Kaleri has suffered the death of a loved one in her past. That loved one was a distant relative to whom she served as guardian. Her name was Sufi and she was gunned down in the post-election violence that engulfed Zonkwa, in the South of Kaduna on April 18, 2011.
That sad incident hit too close to her marrow as Sufi happened to be her only surviving relative from her mother’s bloodline. “Now I have nobody. My father died when I was young and his family didn’t treat my mother right. When she took ill, nobody showed up to assist us with money or care and at her death, I was left alone with no money to my name or roof over my head. I was rescued from poverty and uncertainty by the widow of one of my late father’s friends. She tried to be my mother and got me married to someone she thought was a good man last year. Now she is dead and my husband has gone to live in Jebba with another woman. There is nothing for me here. I sell koko and bean cake and I can sell that anywhere. I am leaving this place. It’s not safe to live here anymore,” she said.
Like Usman and Aliyu, not a few residents of Budum, Kaleri, Gwaneri and other volatile parts of Maiduguri, Borno State, live in perpetual fear ever since the JTF and Boko Haram turned their erstwhile peaceful neighbourhoods into bloody battle fronts.
Many residents still rue the explosion that rocked the vicinity of the palace of the Shehu of Borno and Budum Market in Central Maiduguri on Saturday, July 23, 2011, when a bomb, ostensibly planted by Boko Haram, an Islamic militant group, went off. Targeted at a military patrol in the area, the bomb instantly wounded three soldiers of the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) deployed to Maiduguri to fish out members of the violent group.
The explosive reportedly claimed eight lives and wounded several other civilians. Amnesty International claims 23 other people died in its wake. Although they were not victims of the bomb explosion, they suffered a reprisal attack allegedly mounted by men of the JTF. The latter, due to frustration arising from their inability to easily identify and arrest members of Boko Haram sect, reportedly responded by shooting and killing people at random. Residents accused the JTF of using extreme force on residents of Budum community in reprisal attacks over their hurt colleagues. Following the bomb blast which occurred around 4 p.m, JTF soldiers allegedly set shops numbering over 42 ablaze and shot directly at shop owners and residents while they were fleeing the scene of the blasts.
According to eyewitness accounts, the soldiers conducted a house-to-house search, forcing men suspected to be above 18 years out of their homes before shooting them. Six cars with registration numbers AA495 JRE, AA126KDQ, AM96AMG, AA415NGL, DA314FST, and AE437 DKW were allegedly vandalised and burnt by the soldiers. Although JTF authorities vehemently denied the arson and killings, a visit to four affected families within the community revealed the interminable grief of families who allegedly lost their loved ones to the JTF’s onslaught.
Some of the casualties include the Late Mallam Goni Tijani,(55), Late Babakura Zakariya (18), Late Idris, and the woman in whose shop the improvised explosive device (IED) was planted.
Eyewitness accounts revealed that the soldiers invaded the home of Late Mallam Goni Tijani, 55, forced him out of his room and shot him to death right in front of his family members and children most of whom are below the age of six. His two shops were burnt leaving his two wives and 11 children with nothing to depend on.
The deceased’s aged father tearfully recounted how JTF soldiers dragged the deceased out of his mother’s room onto the streets. He knelt down, and pleaded with the soldiers to spare his life. He died on the spot after he was allegedly shot on the head, chest and waist by the soldiers. Severely wounded Baba Sani Mohammed, a shop owner at Budum Market, had to resort to receiving treatment in his home following a life-threatening gunshot injury said to have been inflicted on him by JTF soldiers while he was fleeing from the burning market.
According to Victoria Ohaeri, Programme Coordinator of the Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC), similar alleged executions had taken place in suburban Kaleri community near Osas Private School. “Homes close to the site of the Kaleri blasts were raided and occupants allegedly murdered in cold blood,” she said.
Ohaeri said that this has resulted in a situation whereby “the Boko Haram on one side and the JTF on the other side are now equally yoked in the gory killings and myriad of security challenges facing the state. Their clashes have left hundreds dead on both sides. The presence of the JTF in Maiduguri has also polarised the state, pitching the haves against the have-nots. While the non-Muslims, persons engaged in formal employment and those living in the formal sections of the city insist on having military presence intensified in Maiduguri and environs, the inhabitants of slum and rural settlements such as Budum, Kaleri, Gomari and London Chiki are equally as vociferous in their call for the withdrawal of soldiers from the state.”
“House-to-house searches, brutalisation, unlawful arrests, killings and disappearances have been the operating practice in Maiduguri for some months now. Unless steps are taken to ensure that security forces operate within the law and respect human rights at all times, the next time Boko Haram attacks or kills a soldier, we are likely to see the same thing happen again,” said Tawanda Hondora, Amnesty International deputy director for Africa.
However, JTF’s field operation officer and spokesperson in Borno, Colonel Victor Ebhaleme, debunked the claims that soldiers in Maiduguri were targeting law-abiding members of the public. He described the claims as “baseless and uncalled for,” claiming that the army would never act in anyway detrimental to the peace of the state. Ebhaleme rather blamed members of the Boko Haram sect for planting explosives in residential areas, which he said were causes of the loss of lives and property of law-abiding civilians.
Ebhaleme was probably right; findings revealed that the bomb that exploded near a military checkpoint in Bulumkutu and injured at least four soldiers was said to have been dropped by a little boy. Residents confided that a boy allegedly dropped a polythene bag containing the explosive beside a huge billboard near the checkpoint but could not approach men of the JTF, apparently for fear of reprisals from members of Boko Haram.
“Nobody is safe anywhere anymore. We don’t feel safe even in our own homes,” lamented Abubakar Idris, an animal feed dealer resident in Kaleri. True; a harmless stroll across the street or quick dash to the neighbourhood grocer has often times resulted in gruesome deaths of unsuspecting adults and minors in the area. Series of coordinated attacks and sporadic gun wars between the JTF and Boko Haram has casted a very dark pall on a state that’s supposed to be Nigeria’s of “Home of Peace and Hospitality.” If anything, the current situation in Borno places it a thousand miles from its fabled state of warmth and tranquility.
The fear of Boko Haram
The group’s official name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, meaning ‘People
Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” It earned its nickname from the teachings of its founder Mohammed Yussuf in the early 2000s. In the restive northeastern city of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State.
Yusuf argued that western education, or ‘boko,’ had brought nothing but poverty and suffering to the region and was therefore forbidden, or ‘haram,’ in Islam. He began peacefully, mostly preaching and quickly gained a following among disaffected young men in the northeast. But his anti-establishment rhetoric and hints that Boko Haram was building an arsenal of weapons also caught the attention of the authorities.
In 2009, the police clamped down on sect members who were ignoring a law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets. That sparked a furious backlash. Police stations and government offices in Borno were burned to the ground, and hundreds of the ground and hundreds of criminals released in a prison break, as the violence spread across northern Nigeria. The government and army reacted with force: Yusuf was captured and short dead in police custody. Five days of fighting left some 800 people dead.
Boko Haram leaders still cite Yusuf’s death as one of the main factors driving the insurgency. The group remains fiercely anti-government and anti-authority and resentful of the decades of corrupt, poor governance that have impoverished its home region.
The group’s headquarters and mosque were located in the city until they were left in ruins by a 2009 military assault in response to an uprising. The remains of the mosque are still there now, one of many signs of crisis in Maiduguri.
Boko Haram went dormant for about a year after the military assault, which killed some 800 people, but returned in 2010 with a series of assassinations before moving on to increasingly sophisticated bombings, including suicide attacks.
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, is still seen as its home base, though it has extended its attacks into other cities, including the capital Abuja and Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city, Damaturu, Yobe State, among others.
At first, Boko Haram was involved mostly in perpetrating sectarian violence. Its adherents participated in simple attacks on Christians using clubs, machetes and small arms. Boko Haram came to international attention following serious outbreaks of inter-communal violence in 2008 and 2009 that resulted in thousands of deaths. By late 2010, Boko Haram had added Molotov cocktails and simple Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) to its tactical repertoire.
How violence has changed Maiduguri
Islamic faithful observe the evening Maghreb prayer – and then have to go straight on to the Isha, the late evening prayer, because Maiduguri has to live under a strict 7.p.m. to 6a.m. curfew. From the mosque, residents hurry back home to their firmly padlocked houses.
Every resident lives in constant fear in the wake of a series of violent and devastating attacks including drive-by shootings and bombings in their once peaceful neighbourhoods. Very few residents have the courage to discuss the pervasive state of insecurity in the state in public.
“You don’t know who is who. That is why everybody is being very careful. Nobody discusses Boko Haram in public anymore because there have been instances whereby some people have been killed for voicing their opinions about the group’s activities,” said Halisu, a crafts dealer.
It gets even worse; the city’s economy which is basically driven by the informal sector and thus has no closing hours is perpetually on the downside as commercial transporters, vendors, shop keepers, property speculators and even beggars no longer engage in business hustle until late into the night. Most businesses close shop by 7 p.m. and property and as a result many of the residents lament of having incurred serious losses.
Babban Layi, Maiduguri’s longstanding commercial centre, which simply means “a wide street,” used to be a Mecca of sort for shoppers and dealers in textile, electronics, clothing, and household items. At the market, Lebanese and Chadian merchants jostled daily alongside low-tech con men and pickpockets all hoping to get a slice of the bulging pockets of money charily carried around by shoppers and dealers of various nationalities and walks of life.
Before the violence, overloaded trucks, known locally as giwa-giwa, transported goods from Babban Layi to neighbouring countries such as Chad and Cameroon and even to distant places like Sudan and the Central African Republic regularly. However, this once thriving regional trading hub is now almost empty as trading activities have declined by the incessant bomb blasts and gun wars that have become the lot of the society. For many months now, merchants, menial workers and the truck drivers among others have been struggling to make ends meet.
Fear pervades the entire city; classrooms have been burnt and reduced to shards of broken glass and pile of cement, but pupils and teachers remain, squeezing into parts of the building still standing for lessons. Outside the school walls, residents who remain push on, worshipping at mosques or churches, including those protected by military deployments and razor wire; many more are visiting markets even as they cautiously avoid malevolent soldiers they accuse of maltreatment.
Maiduguri in retrospect
Legend has it that Maiduguri evolved from a grand conquest in pursuit of peace and humaneness.
Three of the principal features of the capital were the wide roads and drainage, the magnificent shade trees, cleanliness and orderliness. The forest of neem trees makes Maiduguri today the best shaded town in Africa. In fact, until recently, Maiduguri was regarded as the cleanest and most orderly state capital in Nigeria.
Modern Maiduguri actually comprises the twin towns of Yerwa and Maiduguri. In 1907 Yerwa (whose name is derived from an Arabic expression meaning “quenching the thirst,” referring to the waters of the nearby river) was founded on the site of the hamlet of Kalwa and was named by Shehu Bukar Garbai as the new traditional capital of the Kanuri people, replacing Kukawa, 80 miles north-northeast, the former capital of the Bornu kingdom. Meanwhile, the market village of Maiduguri, just to the south, was selected by the British to replace nearby Maifoni as their military headquarters; and, in 1908, they built a residency in what then became the capital of British Bornu. The combined city, locally called Yerwa, was divided into the urban district of Yerwa and the rural district of Maiduguri in 1957; but outside Borno, both political units are now known simply as Maiduguri.
The arrival of the railway in 1964 reinforced Maiduguri’s importance as the chief commercial centre of northeastern Nigeria. Livestock, cattle hides, goatskins and sheepskins, finished leather products, dried fish, crocodile skins (the last two brought from Lake Chad), peanuts (groundnuts), and gum arabic are the city’s chief exports; but there is also considerable local trade in sorghum, millet, corn (maize), rice, cotton, and indigo. There is a large cattle ranch at nearby Gombole, and poultry farming has been introduced in the surrounding countryside. The Monday market at Yerwa, a tradition brought from Kukawa, is the largest in the state; most goods are transported by donkey and, likewise in centuries-old fashion, by oxen owned by the semi-nomadic Shuwa Arabs.
Though the capital’s valid name is Yerwa, the name, Maiduguri, is more common in political and commercial circles outside Borno. History is replete with anecdotes that the capital of Borno or Kanuri Empire at any point in time always has the touch or ingredients of a well planned city with Maiduguri not exception. To this a commentator writes, “……what visitor to Maiduguri whose vitality is so apparent at every turn can ever forget its charm, its grandeur, its exotic appeal? What visitor can be indifferent to the stately sweep of the Dandal; the magnificence of the Shehu’s palace, the imposing grandeur of the state secretariat; the enchanting landscape of the lake Chad Hotel, the glamour of the imposing Maiduguri International Hotel; the fascinating architecture of the celebrated Du Putron houses; the romantic Kyarimi Park, the formidable verdant personality of a clan of one million neems; Borno’s fantastic durbar fanfares, the exotic scene of Shuwa Arabs riding their oxen to the Monday market…? The catalogue is endless!”
However, recent developments have laid waste to the beauty of peace and hospitality that the state was once noted for. According to the Kashim Shettima, the State Governor, “The circumstances that led to the current unfortunate situation in our state and neighbouring areas arose from long years of neglect and structural violence on our people by successive governments, which had failed to address their deplorable existential conditions. The retreating state, dwindling economic resources, visionless ruling class steeped in conspicuous consumption in the midst of abundant poverty created a fertile environment for Boko Haram to thrive. The violence meted out on our people by social conditions such as poverty, exclusion, want, oppression and fear is more grievous than physical violence.
Any society experiencing these levels of deprivation, he said, cannot be said to be peaceful. The transition from physical to structural violence is often imperceptible but predictable. “In more specific terms, we argue that the low-level insurgency playing out in the streets of our towns and villages across the nation, but especially in Borno State, is a direct consequence of a combination of factors, chief among which are youth unemployment and under-employment, acute poverty, political thuggery, endemic corruption, proliferation of arms and ammunition augmented by the peculiar geo-political setting of Borno State neighbouring three countries of Chad, Cameroun and Niger, a sub-region generally known for political upheaval and insecurity, and above all religious extremism and terrorism,” said Shettima.
Dreams of a silver lining
Despite this very sad situation, the authorities in Maiduguri remain hopeful that things will get better. According to Governor Shettima, “Borno was a model, a standard of what was good in the African culture, a pride of the Blackman everywhere and our history was compared to that of the Ottomans and Sa’adi Morocco, some of the oldest and most impressive dynasties in the world. Borno as a society was, and remains, a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic as well as multi-religious society. This heterogeneity often referred to as a melting pot was sustained by a tolerance of dissenting views.”
He blamed the current state of insecurity on the “attempt to impose the opinion of a small group on a larger society, a situation which clearly abridges the freedom to freely hold and express one’s opinion which is fundamental and inalienable in any given society.”
In the history of our society, our leaders had responded to the challenges of their day, similar in gravity, similar to the unfortunate situation we are undergoing today, with utmost sense of restraint and without recourse to violence. The response of the Borno leadership under Sheikh Muhammad El-Kanemi to the attack in Borno and allegations of un-Islamic practices at the beginning of the nineteenth century was clear, simple and straightforward. In his efforts to ensure peace, he carried out a series of theological, legal and political debates through letters with Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio, and later with his son, Muhammad Bello. “We are Muslims and Muslims do not harm innocent souls, much less fellow Muslims; any interpretation or understanding of Islam which justifies the killing of innocent people is condemnable and should be rebuked in toto”.
At the backdrop of his passionate pick-me-up, the question many residents of Maiduguri want answered is: Will peace ever return to Maiduguri? This is surely one tough question for the governor to answer. Already, Governor Shettima has revealed his willingness to rekindle his people’s confidence in government claiming that he has embarked on numerous programmes of job creation, skills acquisition, poverty alleviation, empowerment and capacity building programmes.
“Specifically, government has compensated all victims of the recent crisis as submitted by the committee set up by government which collated the data…It has also purchased foodstuffs worth N2 billion and distributed same and collaborating with micro-finance banks to provide soft loans to our farmers and traders. The whole mantra is on the increase in yield and we intend to unleash the potential of our youths by investing N10 billion into the agricultural sector”.
The governor stated that his government has put in place a machinery to create 500,000 jobs to address grassroots socio-economic empowerment drive, total overhaul of the education sector, infrastructural renovation and improvements and putting in place quality assurance monitoring taskforce and enhancement of the feeding system to encourage children to attend and stay in school.
“In addition, vocational and farming skills acquisition centres are being provided and rehabilitated while all our dormant industries are receiving attention and very soon they will engage substantial number of the unemployed…The ultimate aim is to engage the pool of unemployed and redirect their energy to productive use while restoring their dignity and self-esteem. This way, some of the drivers of radicalisation will be eliminated,” he said.
Despite this glimmer of hope, the situation in Maiduguri is still pretty desperate. Recently, gunmen suspected to be members of the Boko Haram sect, commenced the burning and destruction of GSM masts and communication facilities in some areas of Maiduguri and neighbouring north eastern states.
To check the tide of violence and insecurity, gun-toting soldiers have set up numerous checkpoints and taken up positions outside telecom masts, police stations, churches and other high-profile locations that have previously been Boko Haram’s targets. The soldiers are there to protect the residents of Maiduguri even as the people seem coherent in their condemnation of the militarisation of the streets. They accuse the soldiers of torture and other human rights violations.
On the flipside, Boko Haram squads target soldiers and security agents with explosives, either in their fortified positions or in their patrol vehicles. After an attack, the soldiers storm neighbouring communities, and are said to indiscriminately molest and shoot the male occupants. The army denies this is happening – nevertheless, it is a recurring cry that is hard to ignore.
