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A screengrab taken from a video released on YouTube showing Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau (center) sitting flanked by militants ... yesterday. PHOTO: AFPThe Boko Haram sect leader, Abubakar Shekau, has told the Federal Government that it can never destroy the group blamed for hundreds of killings. He spoke on an online video posted yesterday.
News of the video broke as Boko Haram killed five people in an attack on a Maiduguri market in Borno State.
The 14-minute video on YouTube showed Shekau in a white robe, with gunmen holding Kalashnikov rifles around him. A heavy machine gun leaned against a wall as he spoke, first in Arabic and later in Hausa.
Shekau said President Jonathan would be unable to stop the group’s attacks.
“Jonathan, you the helpless, we heard that you intend and want to destroy us, but this talk is useless when it is said by an infidel because only God can destroy us,” Shekau said in Arabic. “Until now, nobody was able to do that (destroy us), and you too will not be able to do anything, with God’s help.”
The North has been under increasing attack by Boko Haram, which is blamed for more than 390 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. Boko Haram has killed Christians, Muslims and foreigners in its growing fight against the government over the introduction of strict Shariah law across the country and the release of all imprisoned followers.
The video included no claims of responsibility for a suicide car bombing on Easter Sunday in Kaduna that killed at least 41 people. Suspicion for the attack immediately fell on the group as witnesses said the suicide bomber had been apparently trying to get close to a church before the explosion. Boko Haram has attacked churches in the past, as well as the United Nations and the Police headquarters in Abuja.
Yesterday’s video showed a new sophistication for the group. Shekau has issued videos via YouTube in the past, though this one included a Hausa-language song at the beginning about the sect, saying its members were ready to kill non believers.
The beginning of the video also showed a logo of two crossed Kalashnikov rifles around a Quran and a black Islamist flag. That symbol mirrors one used by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a group that diplomats and officials believe has loose ties with Boko Haram.
At one point, Shekau even smiles as he describes the ongoing fighting between Boko Haram and the government.
“One day you kill 1,000, and then we turn back, then after two days we kill your own 100,” Shekau said. “We’re turning it around like the way it is in the Quran.”
The nation’s joint security chiefs yesterday assured that the war being waged by Boko Haram against the Nigerian state would soon end, with the sect as the vanquished.
The assurance came in the face of daunting security challenges posed by the sect.
The Joint Security Information Managers Committee (JSIMC) said the military had checkmated many plots hatched by the sect, regretting however that the media had chosen to give undue attention to the sect’s periodical attacks.
Air Commodore Yusuf Anas spoke on behalf of other representatives of sister security agencies. He said the Joint Task Forces set up to tackle the menace of the sect had recorded many successful outings which the agencies have kept under wraps for tactical reasons.
Anas said: “We are winning the war against the terrorists and the security agencies are on top of the game. We have recorded so many successes but keep most of them to ourselves since we are not out to blow our own trumpets.
“We only disclose some of them to the media. The war against terrorists would soon be over. The once in a while strikes being recorded have to do with where the people failed to give us vital information to arrest the situation before they performed their nefarious activities”
The committee members lamented that the media have been blowing the threats or activities of the terrorist group out of proportion, at the same time playing down the successes being recorded against them. They cited the reduction in sect’s bombings in the Miaduguri metropolis as one of the instances.
Spokesperson for the State Security Services (SSS), Ms Marilyn Ogar, said in all parts of the world, it takes collaborative efforts among security agencies and the people to win the war.
Ms Ogar appealed to the media to demonstrate love for the country in the course of their professional duties, citing what she described as recent false alarm by some foreign countries that some hotels in Abuja were targeted for bombing, a claim which she said turned out a hoax.
The committee put the death toll “on the spot” in the Easter Sunday bomb attack in Kaduna at 16, regretting however that there had been an increase in the number of casualties as some of the injured later died in the hospitals. No fewer than 40 persons were killed in the attack.
Present at the briefing were spokespersons of the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Police.
SOURCE: The Nation, 13 April 2012. http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/
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