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Borno
State Governor Kashim Shettima (Images source: www.bornostate.gov.ng)
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Troops
in Maiduguri, Borno State,‘mistakenly’ opened fire on the convoy of Governor
Kashim Shettima as it approached a military garrison near the airport. Shettima
was on his way to visit soldiers, who were wounded in the simultaneous Boko
Haram attacks on Maiduguri, Monguno and Kodunga when the incident
occurred on Monday.
Security
sources, according to SaharaReporters, said the governor’s protocol unit
was to blame for the incident as it failed to notify the military
authorities about Shettima’s intention to visit the military facility on Monday
evening.
An
aide to the governor was quoted by the online news portal as having
said that the governor, who was unharmed in the encounter, returned to his
office unruffled.
The
report however did not say if anyone in the convoy was hurt. It also was silent
on whether or not Shettima’s security aides returned fired.
A
Government House source however claimed that the governor’s convoy heard
sporadic gunshots about one kilometre from the 33 Battalion and therefore made
a U-turn.
He
added that Shettima stopped his convoy at the 707 Housing Estate to calm
tensions and debunk the rumours that the gunshots were by Boko Haram insurgents
that were attacking people at Njimtilo.
Attempts
to also get the reaction of the Director of Press and Communication to the
governor, Mallam Isa Gusau, were unsuccessful as of the time of filing this
report. Calls to his mobile indicated that it was either switched
off or out of coverage area.
But
the State Commissioner for Information, Mohammed Bulama, said what
happened was a “friendly gunshot.” It was not an attack on the governor. It was
a friendly gunshot that was not directed at Governor Shettima or his convoy.
The shots were fired into the air by soldiers who were hailing the governor for
saluting their effort in repelling the insurgents.”
Fleeing
residents of Monguno on Tuesday told The Punch in
Maiduguri, that corpses of people were decomposing on the streets
of the captured town.
One
of them, Babagana Modu, who arrived in Maiduguri on Monday evening, said, “The
pathetic thing is that our dead family members are allowed to decompose on the
streets without burial.
“The
fools (insurgents) are treating us worse than an animal. Definitely, these
people do not know any God.” A woman, Yagana Mohammed, who lost her husband and
two children to the attack, said she would have preferred to die
too. She said, “I would have liked to be killed with my dead husband rather
than living with the memory of the day he was slaughtered. The
matter is made worse by the fact that there would be no grave for me to show to
my other surviving children.
“How
will I explain to them when they grow up that their father and brothers were
slaughtered and left to rot on the streets.”
Meanwhile,
a suspected Boko Haram bomb maker has been arrested by security operatives in
Potiskum, Yobe State. The man, identified simply as Ba’na, is suspected to be
behind the fabrication of explosives used in a series of Boko Haram suicide
attacks.
According
to an AFP report on Tuesday, the suspect was arrested with nine
accomplices.
“He
confessed to being responsible for the manufacture of the explosives used in at
least three suicide attacks and the car explosion outside the divisional police
station,” a police officer said.
Ba’na
was said to have moved to Potiskum from Damaturu three years ago and worked as
a stonemason and water vendor before getting married.
“He
was quite good at his disguise and his mason and water vending jobs gave him
perfect cover,” the officer said.
But
the spokesman for the Nigerian Police Force, Emmanuel Ojukwu, told the news
agency that he did not have any information on the arrest.
Potiskum, the commercial capital of Yobe State, has been hit by a wave of bombings in recent months, including a suicide attack on a secondary school in November in which 58 people were killed.
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