“I can no longer stay here in Kano as it rains bombs. The gun battles rattle us… Kano is no longer safe,” said pregnant Funke Nweke of her decision to flee Nigeria’s northern state with her five-year-old daughter.

An injured man awaits treatment at the Murtala Muhammed General Hospital in Kano after the Jan. 20 bombings. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS

Nweke grimaced as she held her daughter, Nnenna, while they waited at Kano’s most popular motor park to board a bus headed to Nigeria’s south. She and her daughter are fleeing the state, as they fear being attacked by the Islamist extremists Boko Haram.

Kano witnessed the worst series of suicide bombings, bombs blasts and gun battles on Jan. 20. According to the president of the Civil Rights Congress, a human rights organisation based in the northern city of Kaduna, 256 people were killed in the fighting. However, the local police authority puts this figure at 184 dead.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks saying they did so because their members in Kano have been arrested and were being persecuted and maltreated.

“We are responsible for the attack. I am the person who commanded our people to rain sporadic attacks, because we have sent an open letter to the Kano leaders to release our members arrested for no offence, but they refused,” the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, said on a YouTube video, speaking in the local Hausa dialect.

Shekau denied killing civilians in the attacks: “We are killing the police, the military and any other person who connives with them. We are not after civilians. And I enjoy killing a person, like I kill a ram and a chicken, provided that God ordains me to kill him.”

Back at Kano, despite her mother’s grim mood, Nnenna is happy to be leaving. “We are travelling. Bye,” she told IPS happily.

Nweke and her daughter were among several others who converged at New Road in Kano, and queued as they waited patiently to board luxury busses.

“Hundreds of our people, largely women and children, have left because they are traumatised with the attacks recently,” the leader of the Igbo ethnic group in Kano, Dr. Boniface Ibekwe, told IPS by phone.

“I cannot tell you the exact figures of the people that left but we are compiling names. Some have left, some are in hospital receiving treatment and some are still missing…Our men are largely here, we are not leaving,” Ibekwe said.

However, the security of the area remains uncertain. Just two days after the attacks on Kano, the country’s security services recovered more than 300 different explosive devices at various locations around the state.

Police bomb experts said that if the explosives had been detonated, it could have been disastrous for Africa’s most populous state and top oil producer.

While President Goodluck Jonathan said on Jan. 8 that the country would bring the perpetrators to justice, the country’s north faces an economic decline because of the attacks.

Kano is Nigeria’s second-largest city and the country’s centre of commerce. The Igbo community, which is being targeted in the attacks, own many of the businesses here.

“The Igbo dominate automobile, building materials, stationeries and electrical appliances businesses. They occupy 90 percent of these businesses. (If they flee Kano) it would not (be) good for Kano’s economy and that of other northern states,” an economics lecturer at Bayero University in Kano, Dr. Garba Ibrahim Shekau, told IPS by phone.

Shekau said goods being sold by the Igbo people in Kano would become scarce and a larger demand for these goods would see prices skyrocketing.

After the attacks in Kano more than 200 members of the group were arrested, though 80 percent of those arrested are believed to be foreign nationals.

“We have made arrested using intelligence gathering of more than 200 Boko Haram members, and we discovered that 80 percent of them are Chadians,” a senior police officer told IPS on the condition of anonymity.

The Nigerian State Security Service announced the capture of Boko Haram’s purported spokesman Abu Qaqa on Feb. 2.

As a nationwide strike and protests against the lifting of the fuel subsidy paralysed Nigeria for the third day in a row Wednesday, analysts say the billions of dollars a year lost to corruption in the oil industry could have been used to leave the subsidy in place.

Demonstrators flock to the streets of Kano to protest the fuel subsidy removal. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS

Nigeria has some of the lowest fuel prices in the world. But a majority of the population lives on less than two dollar a day, and the removal of the fuel subsidy since Jan. 1 has hit the poor hard by more than doubling petrol prices and transport fares and driving up the prices of foodstuffs and other commodities that are transported from one region to another.

“This federal government policy comes at a time when the unemployment rate is high: over 40 million people are unemployed” in this country of 158 million, Sheka said.

“The social impact is that Nigerians are getting poorer, and the poorer they are the more insecurity we have. We expect socially that there will be more poverty, more hunger, and more social problems like armed robbery and this problem of Boko Haram,” he added, referring to a militant Islamist sect that has carried out attacks and bombings over the last year that have claimed a number of lives.

The decision by the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan to lift the fuel subsidy drove the price of fuel up from 65 naira (35 cents of a dollar) a litre to 150 naira (93 cents) basically overnight.

The government of Africa’s top oil producer said the 7.5 billion dollars spent every year on fuel subsidies could be used to provide desperately needed infrastructure.

Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi told reporters in Kano that “The monies will be used in provision of social amenities and infrastructural development that will benefit Nigerians more and save the country from economic rift.”

The authorities in Africa’s most populous nation also say subsidised fuel is smuggled into neighbouring countries where petrol prices are higher, thus depriving Nigerians of the benefits from the subsidy.

“The subsidy, which runs over one trillion naira, has been shared with neighbouring countries like Chad, Niger and Cameroon,” Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, deputy governor of Kano state, told IPS.

Nationwide strikes and protests

The lower house of parliament held an emergency session on Sunday Jan. 8, urging the president to suspend the decision to slash the fuel subsidy, and calling on the trade unions to cancel plans for an indefinite strike.

But the government stood by its decision and labour unions, students, academics and activists went ahead with the strike and mass protests on Monday.

Up to 10 people were reported killed and many more were injured in the protests as police used live ammunition in some states to disperse demonstrators. “We rushed some victims with gunshots wounds to Nassarawa Hospital. A total of 30 protesters were injured,” Musa Abdullahi, the head of the Red Cross in Kano, told IPS.

A local human rights group, the Civil Rights Congress, condemned the use of excessive force by the police.

Millions of protesters have been taking part in the nationwide demonstrations, marching down the main avenues of the cities chanting anti-government slogans. Most other streets are deserted and shops are closed. In the northern state of Kaduna, two former governors are leading the protest.

“We are not afraid of police brutality and we shall continue with the struggle to the death,” one of the protesters, Kabiru Musa, told IPS at a demonstration in Kano.

Economic losses

“The impact is going to be devastating; if all the sectors are shut down the government is going to lose billions of naira,” said Sheka, at Bayero University.

“The longer the strike drags on, the more negative the impact on the economy and the social impact will be,” said the academic, adding that the government should keep in mind the recent experiences of governments in the Middle East and should be “wise enough not to allow this to happen.”

Official government figures put crude oil drilling at 2.09 million barrels per day since the Niger delta amnesty deal for militants, aimed at reducing unrest in that oil-rich region, went into effect in 2009.

But analysts accuse Nigerians working in the oil industry of conniving with multinational oil companies, and depriving the country of revenue.

“We believe that if ‘leakages’ can be mended definitely, a lot of money can be realised from the area,” Sheka said.

Nigeria imports refined petroleum products to meet domestic demand, because the country’s four refineries are not functioning at full capacity.

Rising wave of insecurity

Curfews have been announced in the northern state of Kano and other parts of the country, and a state of emergency has been declared in some parts of four states: Borno, Yobe, Plateau and Niger.

But the measures have failed to calm protests and quell attacks. Bombs exploded in Borno and Yobe, suspected to be the work of the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. And no fewer than 25 people were reported killed in attacks on churches in Gombe and Adamawa, in the troubled northeast.

An attack on a mosque in Edo State in southern Nigeria was believed to be carried out in reprisal for the church bombings.

By - - and Mustapha Muhammad
KANO, Jan 2 2012 (IPS)

Africa’s top oil producer is on edge, poised to deter possible sectarian clashes between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, while Christians are becoming more vulnerable to attacks from Islamist militants.

Arms and explosives recovered from Boko Haram in Kano. Credit: Mustapha Muhammad/IPS

In its latest report on the casualty figures for Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, dated Nov. 8, Human Rights Watch said 425 people have been killed. Though there are no newer statistics from the human rights group, the number was estimated to have reached over 500 deaths by the end of 2011.

The group claimed responsibility for bombings on Christmas that mainly targeted churches in the northern cities of Abuja, Jos and Damaturu, killing at least 40 people and injuring over 50, according to police reports.

“The recent Christmas bombings may spark off retaliation against Muslims,” Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, a human rights group, told IPS by phone.

“The Boko Haram wants to gain sympathy from the larger Muslim society claiming that they perpetrated the attacks in revenge for Christian attacks on Muslims in Jos during the Eid ul-Fitr (Muslim holy day) congregational prayers on Aug. 29, 2011, to further aggravate confrontations between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south,” Sani said.

Nigeria has almost equal numbers of Christians and Muslims, with the oil-rich south being predominantly Christian.

Boko Haram has now issued an ultimatum giving Christians living in northern Nigeria three days to leave the area.

The recent Christmas holiday bombings sparked fears of reprisal attacks, and the government and religious bodies are intervening in an attempt to calm the tension.

“We are totally against what has been happening; we totally condemn it. Nobody can take anybody’s life, it is un-Islamic, it is un-Godly, all lives are sacred, must be respected and protected by all,” Sultan Abubakar Saad, Nigeria’s top Muslim spiritual leader, told reporters after meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan and National Security Adviser Andrew Azazi on Dec. 27.

In a separate meeting with Jonathan, Christian leaders warned that if the federal government did not take a more active role in providing security they would have to defend themselves.

“The consensus is that the Christian community nationwide would be left with no option than to respond appropriately if there are any further attacks on our members,” said the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.

Two days after the Christmas bombings, a Christian was arrested attempting to bomb a church in the southern city of Yenagoa. A senior State Security Service (SSS) official told IPS “the bomb attempt has nothing to do with Boko Haram as it was confirmed that the attacker was a Christian from Edo State.”

On the same day an Islamic school with over 100 children was bombed in the predominantly Christian southern city of Delta. But it was too early to attribute the attacks to reprisal by the Christian community, the Civil Rights Congress said.

The international community condemned the Christmas bombings in Nigeria, and the government vowed to take a new approach towards quelling the Boko Haram insurgency.

“We are going to adopt a new strategy to fight Boko Haram, I am assuring Nigerians with total commitment,” Interior Minister Abba Moro told reporters at Madala village, a few kilometres outside of the capital Abuja, where a bomb killed 35 people at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church on Christmas day.

The government declared a state of emergency in some parts of four states troubled by bombings and suicide attacks: Borno, Yobe, Plateau and Niger. Just hours after the measure was announced, clashes erupted over land in the mainly Christian south between two rival ethnic groups, the Ezillo and Ezza, leaving 66 dead, including women and children.

The Boko Haram insurgency

The group Boko Haram, whose name means “western education is sin”, is fighting for the implementation of its strict interpretation of Sharia law in Africa’s most populous country. Founded in 2002, the self-proclaimed Muslim sect became internationally known in 2009, when a military crackdown on its members began in Maiduguri, the capital of the remote state of Borno near Nigeria’s borders with Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

Several members of Boko Haram were killed, including the group’s leader Mohammed Yusuf, who died in police custody. But they regrouped, and have launched continuous attacks and suicide bombings in northern Nigeria.

They claimed responsibility for the August 2011 car-bomb attack on U.N. headquarters in the capital that killed 26 people, and for the June 2011 suicide bombing at police headquarters, also in Abuja, that claimed eight lives.

The deadliest series of suicide bombings and attacks for which the Islamist group has claimed responsibility were carried out in the northern city of Damaturu on Nov. 4, leaving a death toll of more than 150, according to Sani of the Civil Rights Congress.

Alleged links with Al Qaeda

There is growing evidence for the much speculated links between Boko Haram and Al Qaeda.

Western security experts say any ties with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – an Algerian terrorist group aligned with Al Qaeda – could make Boko Haram a more potent threat, especially to Nigeria’s oil industry.

Algeria’s deputy foreign minister Abdelkader Messahel told reporters that “We have no doubts that coordination exists between Boko Haram and Al Qaeda. The way both groups operate and intelligence reports show that there is cooperation.”

Algeria has the biggest intelligence-gathering operation on Al Qaeda of any country in the region.

The Nigerian Islamist group’s purported spokesman Abu Qaqa, who has been speaking on their behalf over the last year, stated that Boko Haram and Al Qaeda are fighting for the same goal.

“We have links with Al Qaeda and other Jihadists in the world, and we help each other,” Qaqa told reporters by phone.

French foreign minister Alain Juppe said that his country will partner with Nigeria to fight terrorism by providing technical training for security agents and sharing intelligence.

“If Nigeria accepts the French assistance, it will strengthen its fight against Boko Haram,” Juppe told Kano governor Musa Kwankwaso, on his visit to this northern city.

If there are indeed ties between Nigeria’s Islamists and Al Qaeda, Boko Haram’s skills and area of operations would be strengthened and expanded, Sani said.

Attacks on banks

The Islamist insurgents in Nigeria’s Muslim north have also claimed responsibility for attacks on banks. “Islamist insurgents attack banks as a source of finance for their activities,” Sani said.

Officials from the Central Bank of Nigeria said common thieves and Boko Haram robbed more than 100 banks in 2011.

The unabated bank robberies, suicide bombings, and attacks on churches and police stations by suspected Boko Haram members are scaring foreign investors away from this West African nation of 167 million people.

“I think it is a very bad signal to the Nigerian economy that lives and property are not safe,” economist Shuaibu Idris Mikati told IPS.

“Nobody will come to invest in the country facing these security challenges, nor is it good for the tourists; everybody will be jittery whenever they go to a bank,” said Mikati, a banker-turned-business guru.

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