Boko Haram suspected after suicide blast, prison break in Nigeria

Jonathan: has faced rising criticism at home and abroad for failing to halt the Boko Haram insurgency.

 Reuters/AFP/Kano/Yobe

A suicide bomber killed at least 23 people in a procession of Shia Muslims marking the ritual of Ashura in northeast Nigeria’s Yobe state yesterday, witnesses said.

In a separate incident overnight in central Kogi state, gunmen using explosives blew their way into a prison in the city of Lokoja, killing one person and freeing 144 inmates, Adams Omale, prisons co-ordinator for the state, told Reuters.

In the suicide bombing in Potiskum in Yobe state, a territory at the heart of an insurgency by Sunni Muslim Boko Haram rebels, the attacker joined the line of Shias before setting off his device as they marched through a market in the town, resident Yusuf Abdullahi said.

“I heard a very heavy explosion as if it happened in my room. It took place just 200 metres from my house,” he said.

Another person carrying an explosive that did not go off was arrested, he said.

Mohammed Gana, whose brother was killed in the attack, said he counted 23 bodies at the scene.

Another Potiskum resident, Abubakar Saliu, said soldiers started shooting immediately after the explosion, but it was not clear who they fired at or if anyone was hit by the gunfire.

“We lost 15 of our members in a suicide blast at the end of our Ashura procession,” the head of the city’s Shia community, Mustapha Lawan Nasidi, told AFP.

Fifty people were also injured, he said, adding that several others died when troops who deployed to the scene opened fire. There was no immediate response from the military.

Potiskum has seen repeated violence, including attacks on the Shia community who are hugely outnumbered by Sunnis in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.

Ashura marks the death in battle more than 1,300 years ago of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussein.

Boko Haram’s five-year-old campaign for an Islamic state, which has killed thousands, is seen as the main security threat to Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy and leading oil producer.

State prisons co-ordinator Omale said 26 of the Lokoja prison inmates freed in the Kogi raid had been recaptured.

He did not comment on whether any of the escaped prisoners were Boko Haram members.

Kogi is far south of Boko Haram’s main area of operations but the Islamists claimed a prison raid at the same facility in 2012 that freed more than 100 inmates.

Many of the group’s fighters were thought to have been held at the targeted Koton Karfi prison.

National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said the raid was not linked to the five-year Islamist uprising, blaming it instead on “criminal activity”.

Nevertheless, Boko Haram has been tied to several high-profile prison breaks since 2010 and listed a prisoner swap as a condition for the release of the schoolgirls who were seized from the northeast town of Chibok on April 14.

Meanwhile in Adamawa state, also in northeast Nigeria, tens of thousands of people fled their homes to refugee camps after the militants seized control of the commercial hub of Mubi, the latest among more than two dozen towns and villages to have fallen into extremist hands.

Former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, who is running to be the opposition flag bearer in February polls and is from the northeast, voiced disbelief that “a handful of terrorists” had been able to capture such a huge stretch of land.

“How is it possible that a great nation like Nigeria should find itself in a situation where a handful of terrorists can invade a town as large as Mubi?” Abubakar told reporters.

He said that despite a reported increase in security spending, the military in Africa’s most populous country has proved “unable to cope and unable to defend” against a formerly small-scale insurgency.

The three incidents underscored the worsening security crisis in Nigeria, and cast further doubt on government claims that a ceasefire was in place to end five years of Boko Haram violence.

Nigeria’s government announced last month that a ceasefire had been agreed with Boko Haram and that talks were underway in neighbouring Chad for the release of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted in April by the Islamist rebels.

But although mediator Chad has said the negotiations are still on, a spate of recent attacks across Nigeria’s northeast by suspected Boko Haram fighters has raised serious doubts about whether a lasting peace pact can be achieved.

Prospects for this took another hit at the end of last week when a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video recording the kidnapped girls were “married off” to his fighters, contradicting Nigerian government statements that they would soon be freed.

Nigeria’s military says it killed Shekau a year ago, and authorities said in September they had killed an impostor posing as him in videos.

In Adamawa, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said that they had recorded at least 10,496 internally displaced people in five camps in the state capital, Yola, after violence in Mubi.

Thousands of residents from Mubi, which is Adamawa’s second-largest town, have fled in the past week after Boko Haram’s take-over last Wednesday.

Mubi, which is 200km from Yola and has a population of 150,000, had been a safe haven for people fleeing Boko Haram offensives in surrounding areas.

Nigerian soldiers reportedly fled to the town of Hong, 100km from Yola, according to residents who saw them en route.

Some residents are trapped in Mubi, including Saleh Abdullahi, said Boko Haram “came with their women and children and are now in firm control”.

“They move about in vehicles and on foot patrolling the streets and keep telling people we are now under the authority of an Islamic state,” Abdullahi said.

President Goodluck Jonathan, who is seeking a second term in elections in February, has faced rising criticism at home and abroad for failing to halt the Boko Haram insurgency and obtain the release of the abducted schoolgirls.

In a statement yesterday, Nigeria’s opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) accused Jonathan’s government of misleading the public over the reported peace deal.

“The president has failed in his most sacred duty, protecting the safety and well-being of Nigeria’s citizens,” the APC party said.