Suspected Boko Haram Gunmen Kill 21 in Yobe
DHQ warns of fabricated stories by terrorists' sympathisers
Suspected Boko Haram gunmen shot dead 21 people in Yobe State who were trying to return home to recover abandoned food supplies, a local official and a victim’s relative said yesterday.
“The men, 21 of them, were stopped at Bultaram village by gunmen we believe are Boko Haram members who shot them dead,” said Baba Nuhu, an official with the Gujba Local Government Area in the state.
According to AFP, Nuhu and Haruna Maram, the brother of one of the victims, spoke to newsmen from Yobe’s capital Damaturu, where many Gujba residents have fled to seek refuge from Boko Haram violence.
“My brother and 20 others wanted to bring back their grains to augment their lean food supplies to feed their families,” Maram said.
“Unfortunately, they were killed by (the) same Boko Haram we ran away from.” Gujba is one of a handful of districts in Yobe that Boko Haram captured during a sweeping offensive last year.
The area has been hit by waves of attacks through the six-year Islamist uprising, including a massacre at an agricultural college in 2013 that targeted students sleeping in their dormitories.
The military has claimed a series of successes against Boko Haram in an operation launched in February with neighbouring Chad, Cameroun and Niger. Scores of towns previously under rebel control have reportedly been liberated.
Nigeria’s military and outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan have encouraged those displaced by the uprising to return home, declaring much of the northeast safe for resettlement.
But community leaders in the embattled region have warned that civilians are still at risk of Islamist attacks, especially those returning to remote areas like Gujba where the military’s deployment has typically been thin.
Security experts have cautioned that the Islamists are far from being defeated and are still capable of launching hit-and-run attacks.
But unconvinced by the story, the Director of Defence Information, Maj Gen Chris Olukolade has warned against believing what he termed “fabricated stories by terrorists and their sympathisers”.
In a statement last night, Olukolade noted that most of the reports of the rebound by the terrorists are not true as they cannot be confirmed on ground.
“The reports by some media outfits claiming that terrorists are now in control of Mafa in Borno State are false. The truth is that an attempt by a group of fleeing terrorists who strayed towards the town and engaged in their typical suicide attack was duly repelled by troops. Similarly, the claim by some media organisations that terrorists chased out troops and took over Marte cannot be verified as troops were busy elsewhere during the said attack.
“However, all efforts to track the terrorists who were reported to have attacked the town have not indicated their presence as claimed. Surveillance activities are however ongoing although there has been no indication of the large number of terrorists as being claimed in some reports attributed to anonymous sources,” he said.
He declared that the insurgents have been sufficiently routed in such a way that they can no longer launch the kind of attack they are being credited with.
“The terrorists are certainly no longer capable of that level of coordinated action by thousands of terrorists as reported.
"Also, troops have not retreated from Sambisa forest as claimed by same sources. Rather, the operation is progressing and gaining increasing momentum towards clearing all terrorists hideouts in the forest.
"It is noteworthy that it is becoming common for stories of attacks on some remote settlements to be fabricated and attributed to anonymous or unidentifiable source in remote places. This is apparently the work of terrorists sympathisers or propagandists.
“Military operations to eliminate all terrorist hideouts are going on well and the terrorists are being seriously decimated. They will continue to be pursued and prevented from constituting danger to civilian population in their desperation for survival, suicide or publicity," he said.
He called on the media to “ignore fabrication being churned out by some terrorists’ sympathisers trying to encourage the terrorists who are in disarray. The truth is that the operation to decimate them from Nigerian territories is progressing well. The military will not be dissuaded by the resurgence of false reports on the operations. The progress will be prosecuted as necessary”.