I lost concentration on their movement until I heard a report, an hour or two after, over the BBC Hausa afternoon service, about an ongoing fight between security forces and religious fanatics in Bauchi. I immediately became alarmed because I knew the ram

Maiduguri and security forces had decreed a curfew on the whole city, restricting movements so as to give them enough space to deal with the situation that was clearly overwhelming them. When my family settled at home, they found out that they could not go out again.

There was confusion everywhere as people were running helter-skelter. My wife was constantly on the phone relating the boom-boom sounds they were hearing from all directions.

As reported later, it was probably about that time that the fanatics were fanning out of their enclave and were attacking to kill anyone in uniform. Their first port of call was the nearby police station, which they reduced to rubbles and killed all the policemen they could find. Next was the New Prison, situated adjacent to the state lowcost estate, where they attacked and killed all the prison staff they could find. They also opened the gates of the prison to allow the prisoners escape.

The mayhem had just begun and would continue for most of the week, taking its toll mainly on the people living in the Lamisula and Gamboru areas. The marauding fanatics would even become so emboldened as to take the fight to the police in their homes, attacking the Mobile Police Training College and murdering its second in command. In their misguided fury, the fanatics set fire to the homes of the policemen and killed a number of them undergoing promotional training courses. The Nigerian Army had to be finally called in, and it would take a sustained fight of some gruesome five days to subdue them and capture their leaders.

For me, that Sunday was one long day of stress and trauma. And this went on for all the week. One could do nothing but wait. Fortunately, the situation stabilised at the weekend. The curfew was lifted and we celebrated the end of the skirmishes, thinking that the nightmare was over and we could carry on our lives as it were. We didn’t know that the nightmare was just beginning.

Postscript: I salute the gallant officer Lt. Col. Mohammed Abu Ali who lost his life in a recent fight with Boko Haram elements. I commiserate with his family, particularly with his father, Brigadier Abu Ali, now the Etsu Bassa Nge, a first class emir in Kogi State. Not many knew that the younger Abu Ali was a chip off the old block.

The father, Lt. Col. Abu Ali, a consummate soldier as I knew him then in 1990, was the commander of 33 Armoured Brigade, Maiduguri, and as I recall, was one of the first commanders nationwide to go on air to disassociate his command from the attempted Orkar coup of April 22, 1990. It was a brave action for the time. The son just took after the father. I urge the father to take solace that his son died the kind of death even he would have wished for himself, paying the ultimate price in a war to safeguard the people and integrity of his country.