BOKO HARAM AFTERMATH: How Yobe residents are rebuilding their lives
THE Voice of America (VOA) in this report examines life in troubled Yobe State and how residents struggle to make sense out of the chaos.
Residents of Yobe State in northern Nigeria are rebuilding their lives after what they say have been years of violence, and months during which they were cut off from the rest of the country by the military. But while military officials say Yobe State is stable, schools remain closed after gunmen slaughtered nearly 30 children at a secondary school.
Malam Abubakar was a teacher at Mamudo Secondary school when gunmen threw explosives and opened fire on students in the middle of the night early July. The school, like all the rest in Yobe state, was closed immediately, but Abubakar still comes to work because every now and then frightened children return to the
boarding school to gather their things.
In a nearby mud home, partially collapsed due to rain, 14-year-old Isa Saleh Dasheri said he ran from the school when he heard the gunshots, jumping over dead bodies into the bush. But if the now-burned school is repaired and re-opened, he said, unlike some students, he will go back to school.
But his mother said that he, like all the other children, will be scared.
Other locals blame the school attack, in part, on the fact that phone lines were cut for two months by the military, after a state of emergency was declared in three northeastern states in mid-May.
President Goodluck Jonathan said at the time the Islamist militant group Boko Haram had overrun parts of the north, and he sent thousands of troops to the battle.
Farmer Adamu Nguru said if they had mobile phones, locals could have warned security forces the militants were about to attack the school.
But the spokesman for Yobe state security forces, Lieutenant Eli Lazarus, said phone service has been restored and life is starting to get back to normal. He said the restoration of the phones may help security forces conquer Boko Haram for good, because they rely heavily on local informants.
“Somewhere along the line with the outage of the telecommunication service people who were intent to give us information were unable to do so and that has impacted our operation in so many ways,” said Lazarus.
Defeating Boko Haram
Critics say if the Nigerian military can successfully beat Boko Haram, a fractured group of shadowy militants that has been blamed for thousands of deaths since 2009, the victory will not last. In the past, Boko Haram has melted away only to resurface later, stronger and better armed.
Lazarus said actually putting an end to attacks could take a long time.
“Insurgency is something that takes time to fizzle out, to overcome completely. You keep on seeing one or two hits around. Probably because these people are disguised as civilians and they carry themselves as innocent citizens only for them to wreck havoc somewhere. You still have pockets of them,” said Lazarus.
Farmer Ahmed Dori said it will take even longer for the region to recover economically, after two months of living “at a standstill.”
Farmers say that in the past year they have not been allowed to grow some of their regular staple crops because high plants can provide cover for insurgents.
Parents say although they are afraid to send their children back to school, after Ramadan ends, they are even more afraid of what will happen to their children if the schools do not open again.
Offensive has destroyed most Islamist bases
The Nigerian military said on Monday that a two-month-old offensive in the northeast had “substantially achieved” the aim of destroying Islamist bases, as well as killing or capturing a number of fighters and freeing victims of abductions.
In
a statement, defense spokesman Brigadier-General Chris Olukolade also
said 23 women and 35 children being held on charges of aiding Islamist
militant group Boko Haram had been released as a gesture of peace to its
more moderate sympathizers.Nigerian forces are carrying out their most concerted effort yet to end a four-year insurgency that has left thousands dead - many of them killed in gun or bomb attacks - and destablised swaths of the north of Africa’s top oil producer.
“The mandate to the forces involves the destruction of all terrorist camps and apprehension of perpetrators,” Olukolade said. “This mandate has been substantially achieved with destruction of terrorists’ strongholds. A number of terrorists have been apprehended ... Many of them have died in battle.”
Boko Haram, which is fighting for an Islamic state in religiously-mixed Nigeria, have in the past proved masters of resurrecting themselves after apparent defeat.
Nigerian authorities thought they were finished after a 2009 crackdown left 800 dead, including the sect’s founder Mohammed Yusuf, but they came back stronger than ever, developing ties with al-Qaida-linked militants in the Sahara.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency on May 14, ordering extra troops into the northeast after reports Boko Haram had taken over large stretches of the remote semi-desert region.
The Nigerian government has deployed thousands of soldiers to fight Boko Haram in the north after emergency rule was declared in three states on May 14.
Since then, security sources say the number of attacks has dropped sharply, although a spate of deadly attacks on schools showed the sect can still inflict mayhem.
Olukolade said the destruction of bases in Nigeria had pushed the militants back inside northeast Nigeria’s cities, like Maiduguri, where many had been seized in cordon and search operations.
On Sunday, Nigerian forces said they had uncovered a vast network of underground tunnels connecting houses and bunkers in the Maiduguri area of Bulabulin, as well as some collective graves of people killed by the militants. Olukolade said some of the bunkers could accommodate over 100 people.
Critics say no amount of military force will solve the underlying issues driving the insurgency, such as the north’s poverty and sense of political exclusion, but efforts to dialog with the sect have failed to get a positive response.
The authorities had also arrested the parents-in-law of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.
Shekau recently uploaded a defiant Internet video vowing never to “dialogue with a government that is corrupt and using the book of pagans [Bible] to run itself.”
