BOKO HARAM: Abuja is under siege — Retired Army generals
Lt. Gen. Alani Akinrinade (retd.)
There are indications that the Boko Haram
attack on the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, on Thursday might not
be last of the deadly onslaughts on the seat of the Federal Government.
Barely three weeks after the sect
carried out a car bomb attack on a motor park in Nyanya, a suburb of
Abuja, killing over 75 persons, the sect attacked the same vicinity
again with another car bomb, which claimed about 30 lives on Thursday
evening.
Some retired Army generals and former senior security operatives, who spoke to SUNDAY PUNCH
on Friday, said Abuja was under siege and urged security agents to rise
up to the challenge and stop the sect from overrunning the FCT.
They also said the increased attacks on
Abuja were aimed at making a global statement and discrediting the
Federal Government, which is billed to host the World Economic Forum on
Africa, in Abuja from May 7 to May 9, 2014.
Though the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar
Shekau, didn’t mention the World Economic Forum in his 28-minute video
message some weeks ago, he boasted that the insurgents were in Abuja,
and were ready to
carry out more attacks while claiming responsibility
for the April 14 Nyanya blast.
A former Chief of Defence Staff, Lt.-Gen.
Alani Akinrinade (retd.), while decrying the attacks, told one of our
correspondents, that Abuja was under siege by Boko Haram and warned that
they were likely to carry out more attacks on the nation’s capital.
He added that terrorists had infiltrated Abuja and every other part of the country.
Akinrinade, who was the Chief of Army
Staff from October 1979 to April 1980 before his elevation to the office
of the CDS, also decried the lack of adequate intelligence gathering by
security agencies. He said the situation had made the creation of state
police a necessity.
He said, “I will not be surprised if Boko
Haram carried out more attacks on Abuja. What is the guarantee that all
the people (terrorists) who bombed Nyanya died in the blast?
“They will return and reinvent it. Those saying such are right; that is what to expect.”
He added, “When you have a cell of
terrorists — who we call urban guerrillas and five of them are
operating in a community, it is not a very simple thing to find out.
“State Police is the beginning of
intelligence. It is about people who go to drink in bars at night and
those who go to night clubs. That is the beginning of intelligence. We
don’t have that. They’ll recruit a man from Sokoto and send him to the
Kaduna Police School. Immediately he finishes, they post him to Mushin
where there is violence. How useful will he be?”
He said Sambisa forest, which is widely believed to be a major base of Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State should be invaded.
Akinrinade said, “I cannot really think
of why security forces have difficulty in locating the site called
Sambisa forest, however large it may be. I do not believe it is
impossible for security forces to run over the place and find out what
exactly is going on or happening there. I can’t believe that.”
Similarly, a former Commandant, Nigerian
Army School of Infantry, Brig. Gen. Williams Obene (retd.), said the
second attack on Nyanya was expected because the sect was out to
discredit the Nigerian government ahead of the World Economic Forum.
He said, “The World Economic Forum summit
that is going to hold in Abuja has attracted terrorists. Their aim is
to discredit Nigeria, portraying it as unsafe to host the summit.
Therefore, they are likely to continue attacking Abuja. I think they
would still carry out more attacks, especially, on soft targets in and
around Abuja in order to create fear and doubts about the ability of
Nigeria to host the summit.
“It’s very likely that the insurgents
will attack the Abuja city centre, unless security agents are on top of
their game. The populace should also be security conscious wherever
they are.”
Obene, who is a counter-terrorism expert,
said the sect might not be able to penetrate high-value targets in
Abuja, so they would go for soft targets like shopping complexes and
market places, where there is likely to be mass murder.
He also noted that no part of the country was immune to Boko Haram attacks.
Obene said, “The way international
terrorism is now, you can’t say distance will make certain places immune
to attacks; that is self-delusion. We must all know that Nigeria is at
war with terrorism, whether that war has been officially declared by
government or not.
“It’s an asymmetric war, where there are
no boundaries or specific location of the enemy. The enemy is
everywhere, anybody can be a suspect. It is the entire nation that is at
war. The insurgents can attack anywhere in the country.”
Also, former Aide-de-Camp to former Head
State, Gen Sani Abacha, Maj.-Gen, Abdulmalik Jubril (retd.), described
the bomb blasts at Nyanya, Abuja as a very painful development.
In a telephone interview with one of our
correspondents in Ilorin, he advised security agencies to tighten
security in other vulnerable places, while concentrating on the Nyanya
area.
He said terrorists divert attention from their main target before they strike.
“Some people were analysing certain
things they saw at the scene of the first blast. They saw a certain
inscription: 1,2,3. We do not know what it means. It can be they are
just telling us the number of times they want to strike that place.
That was why they did the first one and now they have done the second
one,” he said.
In the same vein, former director of the State Security Service, Mr. Mike Ejiofor, told SUNDAY PUNCH that it was not strange that Abuja was attacked twice within three weeks.
He said with the nature of terrorism, insurgents always aim at springing surprises.
“Abuja has witnessed bombings before,
even the heart of the city. People tend not to understand that this is
an asymmetric war and terrorists will always want to exploit any element
of surprise.
“We should show some understanding and encourage our security forces,” he stated.
Ejiofor said Boko Haram cells were
everywhere in the country, including Abuja and that unknown to the
public, security forces had been discovering them and making arrests.
He noted that some countries had fought insurgency for many years.
“Ireland, for instance, fought it for 26
years. We are not praying that it should last for long but Nigerians
should show understanding with government and security agencies,” he
said.
Also speaking on the two bomb attacks in
Nyanya, a former Commissioner of Police in Lagos, Abubakar Tsav, called
on Nigerians to join security forces in the challenge to overcome the
threat of terrorism in the country.
Tsav lamented that terrorism was
escalating because the “President did not pay the expected attention to
insecurity from the beginning of his administration.”
Meanwhile, the Federal Government on
Friday deployed a large number of plainclothes security men in Abuja to
forestall more bomb blasts.
A credible security source in the
Presidency said all the security agencies had been instructed to ensure
that further killings were prevented.
Our correspondent further gathered that
the blast that occurred on Thursday at Nyanya was targeted at Mogadishu
Barracks, on Abuja-Keffi Road.
The source, who pleaded anonymity, said a suspected member of the Boko Haram sect was also arrested last week in Abuja.
Our correspondent could not get the
Director of Defence Information, Maj.-Gen Chris Olukolade, to comment on
the issue, as calls to his mobile phone did not go through.
He was said to be at the Presidential Villa for a meeting.
