Borno state reveals of Boko Haram ruination
Rebels’ new video denies surrender
ABUJA, April 1, (Agencies): Some 20,000 people have been killed in the Boko Haram insurgency in Borno state in northeast Nigeria, according to a report for the World Bank that puts the cost of destruction at $5.9 billion.
The report lays bare the extent of the damage since the insurgency began in 2009 and which at one point saw the Islamists control swathes of territory across the northeast.
It is part of a Post-Insurgency Recovery and Peacebuilding Assessment, an intervention programme involving the World Bank, European Union and the UN with six northeastern states.
Assessments in each of the states were carried out in areas including education, healthcare, water, sanitation, housing, municipal buildings, energy, environment, transport, economy and business.
In Borno, sources with knowledge of the report told AFP o n Monday that some 20,000 citizens are thought to have been killed during the violence -- a higher figure than previous estimates.
Displaced
In addition, the majority of the more than 2.0 million internally displaced persons came from the state.
In the 27 local government districts that make up Borno, the fighting destroyed or damaged:
■ 956,453 (nearly 30 percent) out of 3,232,308 private houses
■ 5,335 classrooms and school buildings in 512 primary, 38 secondary and two tertiary institutions
■ 1,205 municipal, local government or ministry buildings
■ 76 police stations
■ 35 electricity offices
■ 14 prison buildings
■ 201 health centres
■ 1,630 water sources
■ 726 power sub-stations and distribution lines.
In some areas such as Bama, the destruction has been neartotal, with only 20 percent of houses unscathed.
The report also estimated parks, game, forest and grazing reserves, orchards, river basins and lakes have been poisoned in 16 of the 27 areas, and 470,000 livestock killed or stolen.
The source close to the Borno state government said the report has yet to be approved by the bank and a decision was expected soon on funding.
But given the cost of the damage -- about $5.9 billion -- and Nigeria’s struggling economy caused by the global oil shock, matching external funding for reconstruction could be problematic, the source added.
The World Bank in Nigeria declined to comment.
Boko Haram released a new video Friday denying any suggestions it would surrender, just over a week after their shadowy leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a rare message looking dejected and frail.
Unverified
Shekau, who was not seen on camera for more than a year, released an unverified video late last month and said his time in charge of the Nigerian jihadist group may be coming to an end.
If the video indeed depicts Shekau, he appears thin and listless, delivering his message without his trademark fiery rhetoric. It prompted speculation from the army that the Islamist group was on the verge of collapse in the face of a sustained military counter-insurgency.
However, in Friday’s message, Boko Haram maintained it was a potent fighting force, with fighters posing with AK-47s in front of Toyota Hilux pick-up trucks and a lorry mounted with a military cannon.
“You should know that there is no truce, there is no negotiations, there is no surrender,” an unidentified masked man wearing camouflage said in a prepared script in Hausa, in the video posted on YouTube. “This war between us will not stop.”
The video, which was of markedly better quality than Shekau’s and included Arabic subtitles, featured nine masked Boko Haram fighters standing on sandy ground in an undisclosed desert location.
It is unclear if the masked people in the video include the Boko Haram leader.
Shekau was still the head of the “West African wing”, said the masked man in the video, likening Boko Haram to the Islamist insurgencies in Iraq, Libya and Syria.
In March 2015, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, another of the world’s most deadly terror organisations.
But there were few signs Boko Haram -- now styled as Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) -- has so far benefited from the partnership.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian official says a girl suicide bomber who surrendered in Cameroon is not one of the 276 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram from a school in the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok nearly two years ago, but is from a nearby community.
The official says Cameroonian authorities gave them the names of the girl and an older accomplice but are holding them for questioning about how the Islamic extremists operate. The official in Yaounde, the Cameroonian capital, is waiting for the girls to be handed over.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press on the sensitive matter.