The Heart-Wrenching Horror From Yobe
•..Another grim reminder of the need for state police
Tuesday, last week, no fewer than 34 Yobe villagers, killed in the September 1 attack by Boko Haram terrorists in Mafa village, Yobe State, were given a mass burial at Babangida, headquarters of the Tarmuwa Local Government Area of the state. The bodies were said to have been recovered in a search-and-rescue operation led by the Nigerian Army, supported by local vigilantes.
Dungus Abdulkarim, the police spokesman in the state, gave an official account of how it happened: “Around 150 suspected Boko Haram terrorists armed with rifles and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) attacked Mafa ward on more than 50 motorcycles”. He claimed that the attack was in apparent retaliation for the killing of two suspected Boko Haram fighters by local vigilantes.
“They killed many people and burned many shops and houses. We are yet to ascertain the actual number of those killed in the attack”, he was further quoted to have said. However, Daily Trust, quoting one of the survivors, Umar Abubakar, claimed that over 50 decomposed bodies were buried in Mafa and the surrounding villages out of the recovered 87 corpses, even as people were still searching for relatives who escaped to the bush with bullet wounds.
It is unfortunate that Yobe and Borno states have in the last two months witnessed renewed wave of insurgency despite the notable advances in the war against terror, particularly in the northeast. During the period, four devastating attacks by Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have been recorded, during which an estimated 122 people reportedly died. And these are largely from communities whose inhabitants are said to have enjoyed several years of relative peace. Clearly, if their resort to hitting soft targets is an indication of the degree to which the terrorists have been degraded, the relative ease with which they are still able to move their terror machine around without local intelligence raising the alarm is a grim reminder of the battles still ahead.
Unfortunately, with the spate of attacks increasingly frequent, so have the nightmares of the people returned in full force. The same Daily Trust also quoted one of the villagers in Mafa, Ali Musa, as lamenting the return of the Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgents: “We live in a perpetual fear now knowing that the terrorists can strike at any time. Some of us were forced to abandon our farmlands due to the activities of the insurgents.
“Many of us are forced to pay Jizya tax (a type of taxation historically levied on non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law) to the insurgents before we get access to our farmland. Now that it’s the harvest time, we fear for our lives. If enough security is not provided, most farmers will not be able to harvest their crops”.
Read Also: Sokoto Working To Make Life Better For All–Gov Aliyu
The possibilities are as dire as they are grim. After more than 15 years of the insurgency, the country, surely, ought to have gone beyond this point. The point has certainly been made from the very beginning about the current security infrastructure as being inadequate in the face of current realities. Not only is the military stretched thin, its current preoccupation as the first and the last line of defence has proven unhelpful. As for the police, their over-centralisation, not to talk of their equally palpable lack of sophisticated hardware, has reduced them to passive agents at a time they ought to be playing the lead agency.
What seems so obvious in the circumstance is the need for strong police presence in the local communities. We are here referring to policemen, employed by the state government and stationed in those communities. Surely, they would have made a world of difference. Because they know the terrain and the people so well, and because they have their boots firmly on the ground, they are most likely to enjoy the confidence of the people. More than that, they would be in the position to thwart a number of the direct threats faced by the people, aside gathering and sharing critical intelligence with the federal police, the army and other security agencies.
Clearly, if there is anything to be taken from the latest massacre in Yobe, it is that the country can no longer afford the luxury of clinging to a unitarist, over-centralised police structure. ( The Nation)
