Centenary: a celebration of bloodletting

From Maiduguri to Adamawa to Yobe States of the North East, Nigeria, instead of the clapping and applauses, its trappings of soldiers’ booths and deafening bullets and thunderous noise of the bombs. It’s war of slow destruction and bloodlettings that Nigeria is being celebrated with; as the nation’s hands are full with blood. Emeka Ibemere writes

While Nigeria is agog with the centenary celebration in Abuja and other states of the federation with fanfares and ceremonies, awards, speeches and recognitions, the pariah sectarian group in Nigeria, Boko Haram were with full of activity in bloodletting on the soul of a nation that needs not to shed any more blood in spite of the three years war that severs the heart of African’s strongest country.

In about four months time, it'll be 47 years since the federal troop invaded the Igbo territory of Asaba and Onitsha, and massacred over 3000 families and 300 worshipers at an Apostolic Church in Onitsha in a cold blooded act. That event curled into what is today described as the Nigerian’s civil war.
Today, what seems like another civil war is going on in the Northern parts of the country with more casualties recorded in the North East geographical zone.

With the ongoing centenary fiesta, instead of the centenary celebration which supposed to be a time of celebrating the values that logged together the different geographical entities that were by Lord Lugard’s standard; a nation, the country is celebrating mass killings and disharmony.  

“At a time when weaker nations are trying to solidify and come together as one strong entity and live in peace, unity and prosperity, Nigeria is celebrating mass killings, ethnic divisions, bloodlettings, hunger, poverty, criminality, corruption, political instability, tension, fears, and lack of unity, 100 years after amalgamation and 53 years after independence”, Barrister Adindu Vitus said.

  In the last one week, over 1500 souls and 2000 buildings have been destroyed while the centenary celebration is ongoing in Abuja even with politicians in Abuja and 37 States of the federation making mince meat with the commonwealth proceeds from the oil. Their aides, ministers and other government functionaries were also busy looting the nation dry under the centenary celebration jamboree, Boko Haram mercilessly hacking down the poor and defenceless citizens who ordinarily were supposed to enjoy the celebration. Reports say more than 100 people were killed last weekend in separate attacks in Baga and Izge villages of Kukawa and Gwoza Local Government Areas of Borno State by members of Boko Haram sect.

It was reported that the attack in Baga village bordering Chad Republic which took place Friday evening claimed 10 lives, while the massacre at Izge village, Sunday morning, left over 90 people dead.

According to witnesses Nigerian security forces left the area before students were killed by militant anti-education Boko Haram members last week Tuesday, and only came back after the rampage.

As the celebration was going on in Abuja, capital city of Nigeria, another monstrous slaughter was carried out by Boko Haram. In the killing last week, over 60 young male students, were reportedly sent an earlier grave. All the two attacks took place right before the JTF who claimed to have crackdown the goons.

Daily Newswatch gathered that the Tuesday killing started around at 2 a.m., in a familiar pattern of early morning attacks, the goons set fire to a boarding school in Yobe State and killed students aged 10-16 as they tried to escape. Other students perished in the blaze, according to teachers, some of whom escaped into the bush.

For Umar Mamudo, a school administrator in Yobe, it was a devastating reminder of the threat the dissenters stand for.
According to Mamudo, dozens of boys were slaughtered in Buni Yagi, a remote town in Yobe. He rushed to the hospital near Buni Yagi and saw about 50 bodies, some of whom had been "slaughtered like rams," he said.

In one of the reports, Abubakar Umar Kari, a University of Abuja lecturer says the weak military in checking the genocide was due to the corruption in the military “Insecurity in Nigeria has continued almost unabated. In the past three years, defense has been grabbing the greatest amount in terms of appropriation and there is very little to show for it,” he stated.
the disheartening and confused facts about the operation of the Boko Haram was the fact that despite the state of emergency announced by President Goodluck Jonathan last year, Boko Haram, whose intensified their effort and launched an escalating series of raids and indiscriminate slaughters at schools, along roads, in mosques, at churches, and at communication centres while soldiers stand aloof and supervise the killings.
Last Tuesdays’ attack was the fourth on a school in the past years. It is clear that the insurgency by the Islamist group has increased more deadly creating tensions in the polity. There were reports of how families were collecting their sons at the hospital while other bodies lay unclaimed.
“Government is busy planning for centenary while her citizens are burnt to death without adequate protection of lives and property”, Ade Bakare sadly stated.

Instead of tighten security at the borders and states concerned following the centenary, security was only tight at the Abuja leaving other states porous. Natives claimed that before the school attack, the military left the area allowing the gunmen to storm the dormitories and mauled the students down. Security forces showed up to the remote boarding schools hours after the attack, said Mr. Bega, the spokesperson for the Governor of Yobe State.

For now, the centenary celebration is not going on in all the states. Other north eastern governors have systematically pulled out of the nation’s biggest fiesta following the killings going on in the wake of the celebration.  Last week, Gov. Kashim Shettima of Borno State, after inspecting where hundreds of people were killed in the past two months, incensed with federal officials and said that insurgents have more weapons and motivation than the Nigerian Army.
Jonathan sharply retorted daring the governor to stay in his state house without federal troops for a month.
“If the governor of Borno State feels that the Nigerian armed forces are not useful, he should tell Nigerians,” he said on state TV.  “I will pull them out for one month,” the President said.
In Adamawa, another state under emergency rule, residents say that an attack on one school is a blow to all schools in north eastern Nigeria. One Ibrahim Adamu was quoted to have said that no one is safe here. “No one is safe and government feels like they are unconcerned.”

Gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram terrorists, yesterday, invaded Michika town and Shuwa village of Adamawa State, killing scores of residents before setting ablaze 3 commercial banks, houses and shops mainly located along Maiduguri-Gombi-Adamawa federal highway.

Sources said, “The gunmen using Hilux vehicles and armed with Rocket Propelled Launchers and Improvised Explosive Devices invaded Michika town at about 4am on Thursday and wreaked havoc.

“Apart from the attack on Michika, another group of terrorists attacked Shuwa village at about 4:45 am, setting ablaze many houses before fleeing the scene.”

“Also destroyed in the coordinated attacks are several numbers of vehicles and motorcycles parked on major streets”. The source said.

A woman walks past burnt houses after an attack by scores of Boko Haram Islamists on February 20, 2014 in the northeast Nigerian town of Bama.

In Kano suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed at least 32 people in three separate attacks in northeast Nigeria, including another one at a theological college, a local government official and residents said on Thursday, February 27.

The coordinated attacks in Adamawa state late on Wednesday last week came just a day after Islamist militant fighters killing 43 people, most of them students, as they slept at a boarding school in Yobe state.

The chairman of the Madagali local government area in Adamawa, Maina Ularamu, was quoted as saying that “a large number of militants carried out three separate attacks on Shuwa and Kirchinga in my local government area and on Michika in neighbouring Michika.” According to reports gunmen divided themselves into three groups and separately attacked the three locations.

In Shuwa, several buildings were burnt, including a Christian theological college and a section of a secondary school.

A local resident, Kwaje Bitrus, said three bodies were recovered from the seminary and a total of 20 were killed in and around the village.

In Kirchinga, another report says the gunmen were all dressed in military uniform, a strategy usually employed by the Boko Haram to carry out their killings

It was reported that the gunmen killed eight people in one village and burnt many houses.

"Four people have so far been confirmed dead in Michika," said Abdul Kassim, who lives in the village.

Eyewitness account revealed how residents of Michika fled to a nearby mountain during the invasion of their community by the Boko Haram insurgents.

 Daily Newswatch gathered that the attack lasted for more than four hours. Various residents said four banks were razed, as well as hundreds of shops, a police station, government buildings and dozens of homes destroyed.

Foreign report claimed that it was like a "war zone" and that some 90 percent of all businesses had been destroyed. Adamawa is one of three north eastern states placed under emergency rule in May last year following waves of Boko Haram attacks.

Last week, the JTF in the state ordered the full closure of the border with Cameroon in checking and monitoring the movements of insurgents and movement of weapons with the aim of blocking them.

Investigation shows that more than 3000 people, including members of the sect have been killed in a range of attacks already this year.

Meanwhile, the United Nations report says nearly 300,000 people, more than half of them children, had fled their homes in the three states from May to January 1 because of the violence.

President Jonathan in his centenary celebration speech, said members of the Boko Haram sect are ‘deranged terrorists and fanatics’ who have no conscience of ‘human morality’ and as such descended to bestiality” shown in the senseless killings of students in Yobe.

In a statement by his special adviser on media and publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, the president extended his “heartfelt condolences to the parents and relatives of the murdered students”.

 “President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has received with immense sadness and anguish news of the callous and senseless murder by terrorists of scores of students at a college in Yobe State in the early hours of today”, the statement reads.

“The president wholly condemns the heinous, brutal and mindless killing of the guiltless students by deranged terrorists and fanatics who have clearly lost all human morality and descended to bestiality. He assures the nation that his administration will not relent in its ongoing efforts to end the scourge of terrorism in parts of the country which has sadly claimed more innocent lives today.

“The armed forces of Nigeria and other security agencies will continue to prosecute the war against terror with full vigour, diligence and determination until the dark cloud of mass murder and destruction of lives and property is permanently removed from our horizon.”

 Professor Soyinka who was among the 100 eminent Nigerians to be giving award rejected the award as the late Nigerian tyrant, General Sani Abacha and other known killers and looters of Nigeria’s treasury were also on the list.

Rejecting the award in his letter captioned: ‘The Canonisation of Terror’, Soyinka observed that the inclusion of Abacha on the list does not only show a failure of a moral rigour but it calls into question, "the entire ethical landscape into which this nation has been forced by insensate leadership".

According to Soyinka, Abacha's regime was known for assassinations, torture and other forms of barbarism. An elected president and his wife, M.K.O and Kudirat Abiola were snuffed out by Abacha as well as nine Nigerian citizens, including the writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, were hanged after a trial that was stomach churning.

"We are speaking here of a man who placed this nation under siege during an unrelenting reign of terror that is barely different from the current rampage of Boko Haram. It is this very psychopath that was recently canonised by the government of Goodluck Jonathan in commemoration of one hundred years of Nigerian trauma. "What the government of Goodluck Jonathan has done is to scoop up a century’s accumulated degeneracy in one pre-eminent symbol, then place it on a podium for the nation to admire, emulate and even–worship." There is a deplorable message for coming generations in this governance aberration that the entire world has been summoned to witness and indeed to celebrate. The insertion of an embodiment of governance of terror into the company of committed democrats, professionals, humanists and human rights advocates in their own right, is a sordid effort to grant a certificate of health to a communicable disease that common sense demands should be isolated. It is a confidence trick that speaks volumes of the perpetrators of such a fraud," Soyinka said.

Honourable Anike Charles, National Coordinator, Easter Union, a coalition of the former South Eastern group said the 

Centenary celebration was supposed to mark a milestone in the history and destiny of Nigeria and Nigerians but unfortunately, those expected to be the chief beneficiary of the amalgamation, the Northern tribe of Nigeria became the main threat to the celebration due to ignorance.

“The security challenges posed by the Boko Haram insurgence are greatest threat to the centenary celebrations in Nigeria because even in the height of the celebration, they are attacking and killing students”, he stated. “Remember, the Presidents, heads of states and governments of many nations of the world were expected in Nigeria during this period. Nigeria needs the corporation and supports of her other African nations, especially, its closet neighbours to be able to tackle the insurgence and that is the main reason for conference. The 1914 amalgamation of north and south is the most British colonial’s positive thing in Africa that helped shaped country”. According to him, the Colonial masters that helped to shape the history and destiny of Nigerians may be questioning the reasons behind the several attacks. He said a critical study will reveal more advantages.

Barrister Temple Nnedum, President of All State Women Association of Nigeria; worldwide speaking on the implications of the attacks during the centenary celebration stated that the   Boko Haram activities are becoming unbearable. “We as a nation should stand up to fight the goons. We will not watch them kill our children that we suffered to born. We asking the President to remove the Governors of the three states and replaced them with military administrators for proper result”, Nnedum stated adding that. “We are of the opinion that the security should concentrate on the areas Boko Haram has their stronghold. All borders in the North should be closed”.

Nnedum also said her Association lost their members and children in the last one week imbroglio.

She said. “Mr President, arise and women of Nigeria are behind you”. Nnedum queried the withdrawal of soldiers in the areas were the goons operated without challenges and asked.

“Who authorised the soldiers’ withdrawal. Why did the soldiers disappear”?

ASWAN leader urged the Military to wake up and defend the territory of the country.

 “Blood are being waste in Nigeria by bloodless criminals on daily basis. Boko Haram is evil; it should be condemned by all peace loving Nigerians. We believe Nigeria is at war with these terrorists, Nigerian government should not take them for granted. Enough of these massacres of innocent students and people. We understand that the soldiers were withdrawn and immediately after, Boko Haram members arrived and started their killings. It is a ploy to disrupt the great centenary celebration but they will fail”, she added. “The celebration must not be cancelled. We are urging all Nigerian women in the Northeast to be undercover agents to the JTF in other to curb these deadly attacks on Nigerian citizens”.

Osita Chinagorom commenting on Facebook said the centenary celebration was like the insensitivity of King Nero who wined and dined while Rome burnt to ashes