Boko Haram threatens to attack Lagos, claims link to al-Queda

Soyinka Queries Killing Of Yusuf
From Kamal Tayo Oropo, Samson Ezea, Onyedika Agbedo (Lagos) and Njadvara Musa (Damaturu)
TWO weeks after the crackdown on the extremist Islamic sect Boko Haram, the group regained its voice yesterday, threatening to cause more violence with the southern part of the country as its major target.




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Yesterday too, Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka said the alleged extra-judicial killing of the sect's leader Mohammed Yusuf and other members of the group was deplorable, regardless of the gravity of the crime they committed.

According to a statement by Mallam Sanni Umaru, which was sent to newspaper houses, Boko Haram is not limited to Northern Nigeria.

"In fact, we are spread across all the 36 states in Nigeria, and Boko Haram is just a version of the Al Qaeda, which we align with and respect. We support Osama bin Laden, we shall carry out his command in Nigeria until the country is totally Islamised, which is according to the wish of Allah," the group said.

The group added: "Mallam Yusuf has not died in vain and he is a martyr. His ideas will live forever. We lost over 1000 of our martyr members killed by the wicked Nigerian army and police mostly of southern Nigerian extraction. The Southern states, especially the infidel Yoruba, Igbo and Ijaw infidels will be our immediate targets. The killing of our leaders in a callous, wicked and malicious manner will not in any way deter us.

"We have started a Jihad in Nigeria, which no force on earth can stop. The aim is to Islamise Nigeria and ensure the rule of the majority Moslems in the country. We will teach Nigeria a lesson, a very bitter one.

"From the month of August, we shall carry out a series of bombings in Southern and Northern Nigerian cities, beginning with Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt. The bombings will not stop until Sharia is established and and western civilisation wiped off from Nigeria. We will not stop until these evil cities are tuned into ashes.

"We shall make the country ungovernable, kill and eliminate irresponsible political leaders of all leanings, hunt and gun down those who oppose the rule of Sharia in Nigeria and ensure that the infidel does not go unpunished.

We promise the West and Southern Nigeria, a horrible pastime. We shall focus on these areas which are the devil empire and have been the ones encouraging and sponsoring western civilisation into the shores of Nigeria."

The statement continued: "We call on all Northerners in the Islamic States to quit (membership) of the wicked political parties leading the country, the corrupt, irresponsible, criminal, murderous political leadership, and join the struggle for Islamic Society that will be corruption free, Sodom free, where security will be guaranteed and there will be peace under Islam.

"Very soon, we shall stir Lagos, the evil city and Nigeria's South West and South East, in a way no one has ever done before.

"Boko Haram does not in any way mean 'Western education is a sin' as the infidel media continue to portray us. Boko Haram actually means 'western civilisation' is forbidden. The difference is that while the first gives the impression that we are opposed to formal education coming from the West, that is Europe, which is not true, the second affirms our believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not education), for culture is broader; it includes education but not determined by western education. In this case, we are talking of western ways of life which include: constitutional provision as it relates to, for instance, the rights and privileges of women, the idea of homo-sexualism, lesbianism, sanctions in cases of terrible crimes like drug trafficking, rape of infants, multi-party democracy in an overwhelmingly Islamic country like Nigeria, blue films, prostitution, drinking beer and alcohol and many others that are opposed to Islamic civilization."

Speaking with journalists in Lagos yesterday, Soyinka declared: "I am joining others who have protested the extra-judicial murder of the Boko Haram."

Pointing out that the Federal Government was to be blamed for such uprising, Soyinka x-rayed a condition that encouraged such religious fanaticism.

"When the Kano incident by those who do not even know where Denmark is located on the world map happened, everybody went to sleep and no punishment was meted out on anyone: that is the root cause of Boko Haram. The state of corruption has to do with it. The marginalisation has to do with. The sense of not belonging has to do with it. But the greatest is the tacit encouragement of impunity by one government after the other. The laughable , of appeasement, is what we used to hear, until the thing reached a point when the entire country is now in crisis. The question is what is next. When will the president or the governor get up and say enough is enough.

Speaking on the restlessness in the Niger Delta, Soyinka cautioned on the use of words, which may send wrong signals on the true situation of things. His words: "When I read in the media, a reference to repentant militants, I ask myself exactly who are they? And the reason I ask the question, is that I am yet to hear about or encounter or recognize a repentant militant. Are you sure we all understand what the word repentant means? I am not very sure that we do, because repentant means that you accept guilt, the judgment of guilt over a certain form of conduct.

"I am not aware that the militants have renounced their belief. And this is what I am saying about the danger of the use of language. I am not aware that the Niger Delta militants have renounced their belief, that they have renounced the root cause for which they have been agitating. I am not aware that they have renounced their belief in a more equitable distribution of resources. I am not aware that they have renounced their belief in fiscal federalism. I am not aware that they have renounced their belief in the necessity for decentralization of governance for the very survival of governance for the very survival of this Nigerian entity."

Meanwhile, Governor Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State yesterday directed all the 14 traditional and religious leaders in the state to be on "a security alert," following the receipt of a military intelligence report to assassinate him and other top government officials in the state.

The order, which takes immediate effect, was made at the recent State Executive Council (SEC) meeting, at the Damaturu Government House, while responding to his last February's alleged food poisoning to kill him.

We’ll bomb Lagos, Ibadan – Boko Haram
By Daniel Alabrah, Sola Balogun, Samuel Olatunji & Sunday Ani

Sunday, August 16, 2009
* Police beef-up security







* They’ll meet their waterloo – OPC

* Don’t provoke Igbo – Ikedife

You wake up early in the morning in Lagos and head towards Victoria Island from the mainland, only to discover that the Third Mainland Bridge had been cut off by Islamic jihadists.

In Ibadan, also in the South West, the rampaging insurgents have struck, cordoning off the State Secretariat after the governor had sat down in his office.

The South East had equally been cut off from the rest of the country with the bombing of the Niger Bridge, and Aba Road and Diobu in Port Harcourt are in flames, sending jitters down the spines of government officials and the security agencies across Nigeria. Like before, there was warning by the sect members but no one took them serious until they struck.

This is the ugly scenario stalking the nation with the latest threat of the Boko Haram sect to inflict mortal injuries on the cities of Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt beginning from this month of August. [size=14pt]Their targets - Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw - whom the sect described as infidels.[/size]

This time around, the nation might ignore the latest threat to its peril if the chilly scars of the 9/11 terror attacks are anything to go by. In an electronic mail statement to the media, the new leader of the group, Mallam Sanni Umaru, warned: “We have started a Jihad in Nigeria, which no force on earth can stop. The aim is to Islamise Nigeria and ensure the rule of the majority Moslems in the country. We will teach Nigeria a lesson, a very bitter one.

“From the month of August, we shall carry out series of bombings in Southern and Northern Nigeria cities, beginning with Lagos, Ibadan, Enugu and Port Harcourt. The bombings will not stop until Sharia is established and western civilisation wiped off Nigeria. We will not stop until these evil cities are turned to ashes.”

The Bokom Haram bombshell is coming two weeks after the fundamentalists struck in four states in the North, namely Bauchi, Kano, Yobe and Borno, killing scores before their leader, Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, an alleged financier of the group, Alhaji Buji Foi, and close to 1000 members were felled by the combined force of the army and police.

Already, the police authorities have placed their men on read alert and have beefed up security at strategic areas across the country.

In a telephone interview with Sunday Sun, Lagos police command spokesperson, Mr Frank Mba, said the command was not aware of any formal threat from the radical Islamic group but that they have put in place security measures to prevent the Borno kind of attack from happening in Lagos.

“I am not aware that such a formal notice was issued. However, no state is in isolation. Since the event in Borno occurred, the command has been putting security measures in place to prevent such attack. The first thing we did was to call meeting of religious and tribal leaders to prevent ripple effect.

“We have also deployed undercover operatives to sensitive areas. We have engaged what we call high visibility policing. That is a measure where police men are everywhere. The armoured vehicles, police cars, stop-and-search are part of the high visibility policing we are talking about.

“There is also a special team monitoring movement of people in and out of the state. I want to assure people that Lagos is safe and it will continue to be safe. Lagos is not a fertile ground for such activity,” Mba said.

The leadership of Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) reacted angrily to the threat with a stern warning to the religious fundamentalists to stay off Yorubaland or meet their waterloo. Both the OPC founder, Dr Frederick Fasehun, and the National Coordinator, Otunba Gani Adams, condemned the threat, insisting that the Yoruba would not fold their hands and watch Islamic fundamentalists cause mayhem on their land.

Adams, who berated the Islamic group for attempting to cause chaos in Nigeria, warned that they will meet their waterloo should they venture into Yorubaland.

“We are ready for them and we will match them force for force if that is the only thing they understand.”

Adams, in a telephone interview with Sunday Sun, revealed that the OPC had alerted all its units across the six Yoruba states immediately the police reportedly arrested some people in Abuja on their way to the Southwest to cause havoc.

According to him, “we have our men on alert already since the police arrested some of them in Abuja coming to Lagos. We are ready for them. They should not come and disrupt the harmony in Yorubaland. We have a secular society in place here and they won’t come and disturb it. We have a plan in place that would effectively curb their advance anytime they decide to come to the South West.”

The OPC founder was equally incensed over the report, warning that an attack on Yorubaland would be seen as provocation and be so treated.

Fasehun, who noted that the report was just an empty boast, however advised the security agencies not to take it lightly.

Likewise, the immediate past president of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr Dozie Ikedife, has warned the federal government not to take the threat lightly.

Speaking in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents on Saturday, he warned that should the group come to Igboland it would be seen as extreme provocation, which would be resisted accordingly.

The Igbo leader advised the government not to take the threat as an empty one before the whole country is thrown into crisis, adding that Nigeria cannot afford any war again.

Ikedife asked the group to seek peaceful separation from the country if they don’t want to be part of Nigeria instead of resorting to bombing and killing as it cannot be an answer to their grievances.

He doubted if the group actually represents the Islamic religion, stating that there are unseen hands supporting its activities and advised the federal government to ensure that such faceless individuals are unmasked.

“There is an Igbo adage which says that a little bird dancing by the road side has the drummer within. The federal government must find out these drummers,” he stated.







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