Nigeria’s Islamic extremist insurgents Boko Haram are blamed for using teens and women to carry out suicide bombings in neighboring Chad and Cameroon this weekend, killing more than 45 people in what Cameroon’s government spokesman said is a move to spread terror as a multinational force prepares to deploy against them.

Two girls between the ages of 13 and 17 carried out suicide bombings in the northern Cameroon village of Kangeleri near Mora town on Sunday, killing at least 9 and wounding 29 others, said Cameroon’s Minister of Communications Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

The Cameroon explosions come after five coordinated suicide bombings in neighboring Chad on Saturday killed at least 36 people and wounded some 50 others in a village near Lake Chad that is home to thousands of Nigerians who have fled the extremists’ violence. The government said a man, two women and two children carried out the attacks.

Read it all.

“We call on Nigerians to support the government of President Muhammadu Buhari and be patient with him as we urge him to fulfill his campaign promises to Nigerians. “President Buhari should see himself as president of the whole nation and not a sectional or religious president”, he admonished.

He cautioned that despite the myriad of challenges confronting the nation, dismemberment of the country remains a ridiculous thinking, adding that it is an unthinkable idea after shedding innocent blood through the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War to keep Nigeria one.

The religious leader commiserated with the families of those that have lost their lives in the North through the activities of Boko Haram insurgency, and called on the governments at all levels, religious organizations and philanthropists to come to the aid of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) who have been dehumanized by the activities of insurgents.

Read it all.

The roads that wind north from Lagos, Nigeria, toward the headquarters of the Winners’ Chapel mega-church are lined with unusual testaments to Nigerians’ religious fervor.

There’s the Amazing Grace Hair Salon and the No King But God Driving School, My God Is Able Furniture Makers and God’s Grace Multipurpose Hall. And wedged between these omnipotently styled businesses are the churches themselves, hundreds of them, carrying on tenaciously in a sweltering tin shack or a room balanced atop a gas station, in the parking lot of a half-finished shopping mall or perched on stilts above Lagos’s thick, viscous lagoon.

But even in a country so devout, Canaanland stands out. The headquarters of one of the most powerful churches in Africa rambles out across 10,500 acres and includes not only a massive church ”“ the 50,000 seat Faith Tabernacle ”“ but a fully stocked company town complete with schools and a university, a bottled water processing plant, restaurants, shops, and residential neighborhoods. Every weekend, hundreds of bus loads of Nigerians, regally coiffed in vividly patterned, tailor-made suits and dresses, pour through its gates for Sunday service.

Read it all.

Over 180 bishops, laity and Clergy of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) converged on Akure, the Ondo State capital from Monday to Thursday last week to seek the face of God over the challenges of insurgency and kidnapping in the country.

Primate of the church, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh said the only way out of the current spate of terrorism is “to look up to Jesus in simple faith and obedience.”

Speaking at the Cathedral Church of Saint David, Diocese of Akure, the venue of meeting of the church standing committee titled; “Look and live”, Okoh expressed worries over “the poisonous serpent of insurgency and kidnapping ravaging the country”, lamenting that “these people kill, maim and destroy without the slightest qualms and most times in very crude and dastardly manner….”

Read it all.

The church of Nigeria Anglican communion Wednesday went spiritual as it prayed for the quick release of the former Secretary to the Government of Federation SGF) Chief Olu Falae.

Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) Most Rev’d Nicholas Okoh led Standing Committee of the Anglican Church consisting of 180 bishops and Laity to pray and plead that his abductors should have a rethink and set him free forthwith.

Okoh was in Akure for a four day meeting of the standing committee of the Anglican Church.

Read it all.

Boko Haram carried out its deadliest attacks on the key northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power, killing scores in a series of coordinated bomb blasts.

Police in the Borno state capital said at least 54 people died in Sunday’s co-ordinated strikes, with 90 injured, but residents caught up in the explosions said as many as 85 lost their lives.

The attacks on Sunday night in the Ajilari Cross area and nearby Gomari, near the city’s airport, killed and maimed worshippers at a mosque, bystanders and football fans watching a televised match.

Read it all.

The number of children forced to flee Boko Haram’s Islamic insurgency in Nigeria and neighboring countries has reached 1.4 million, UN children agency, Unicef, said on friday.

The radical Islamist group has used children as targets and recruits in its war on the Nigerian state, with the aim of establishing its own Islamic caliphate in the country’s northern regions.

In April 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped more than 270 schoolchildren from the village of Chibok, the majority of whom have still not been found.

Read it all.

Nigerians have greeted the recent reported surrender of Boko Haram terrorists and federal government’s dialogue with the terrorists with mixed feelings.

Recent reports from the military high command in the northeast indicate that the Boko Haram terrorists, weary of fighting and mass-killing through suicide bombing, have begun to lay down their arms and handing themselves over to the Nigerian military.

Immediately coming on the heels of the military report was the statement credited to the presidency that negotiation was ongoing with the leaders of the terrorists who have severally been quoted as bragging that they would not go into any negotiation with the Nigerian government.

Read it all.

The Defence Headquarters has announced the imminent end of the Boko Haram insurgency, saying the reign of the sect would soon be a thing of the past.

The Acting Director, Defence Information, Col. Rabe Abubakar, reportedly gave the assurance when a group of journalists visited him in his Abuja office on Monday.

A statement issued by Lieutenant Commander Olabisi Way, restated a renewed commitment of the leadership of the Armed Forces and determination on the part of the troops in the counter insurgency operations.

The DHQ eulogized what it described as the heart-warming success of the coordination between the Nigerian Air Force and the Nigerian Army in the ongoing campaign.

Read it all.

Addressing newsmen at All Saints Anglican Church, Oshodi, Lagos to flag off the annual BSN Marathon Bible Reading programme, Ajiboye noted that the vices in the country revolve around unrighteousness and ungodliness and that the solutions given by God are embedded in the Scriptures.
He said: “Imagine what will happen if Nigerians read their Bible daily, imbibe biblical virtues and live according to the will of God; no doubt, God will be pleased with us because righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people.
“Nigerians are the most religious people in the world but the challenge is that our actions are against the Word of God. There are Christians who can effectively quote the scripture more than the pastors but they do not act in accordance with the Word of God that they read.

Read it all.

Boko Haram militants have destroyed infrastructure that may cost more than $1 billion to rebuild in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, the main theater of the government’s six-year fight against the Islamist insurgency, according to Governor Kashim Shettima.

“Hospitals, bridges, roads that they mined will require about 79 billion naira ($397 million)” to rebuild, Shettima, 49, said in an interview at his office in the state capital of Maiduguri. “If you are to quantify the homes, the figure may reach even three times the figure I quoted.”

The conflict has displaced 1.6 million people in Borno state, or 27 percent of the population, and about 121,000 live in camps in Maiduguri, according to the National Emergency Management Agency. With Boko Haram razing villages, schools, hospitals, clinics and businesses in 22 of 26 of Borno’s local government areas, residents have abandoned their homes and sought refuge in the relative safety of the state capital and the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

Read it all.

The Anglican Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of Nigeria, Most Rev. Nicholas Okoh, has advised Christians to be vigilant of kidnappers.

He gave the advice in Abuja today, September 5, at the 2015 Annual Pre-pilgrimage Retreat and Workshop for staff of Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC) and other stakeholders.

Okoh’s advice comes on the heels of the kidnapping of Rev. Moses Tabuwaye, from the Gwagwalada, Abuja Diocese yesterday, on his way to Awka, Anambra state, for a church programme.

Read it all.

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen on horseback killed at least 24 people in two separate attacks on villages in northeast Nigeria, military and vigilante sources said on Wednesday.

The gunmen opened fire and threw explosive devices in Kolori and Ba’ana Imam, in Damboa Local Government, Borno state, in the attacks on Monday evening.

Although nobody has claimed responsibility and the militants are rarely on horseback, the attacks bore the hallmarks of the Islamist group, which has killed thousands in its six-year-old bid to set up a state adhering to sharia law in the northeast.

Read it all.

ABUJA/JOS, Nigeria ”“ On Thursday, Nigerians marked the 500th day since the kidnapping of almost 300 mostly Christian schoolgirls from the remote town of Chibok by Boko Haram, the radical Islamic terrorist group held responsible for more than 17,000 deaths here since 2009.

It’s long been frustrating for Nigerians that their armed forces, with 200,000 active duty troops, 300,000 paramilitary personnel, a budget of $3.25 billion, and a history of successful peacekeeping operations in neighboring countries, has been either unable or unwilling to get Boko Haram under control.

The fact that most of the Chibok girls remain missing 16 months into their abduction is the single most damning symbol of that failure.
…….
In Christian circles, the fact that Boko Haram is still operational despite the seeming mismatch with the army has bred suspicions that politicians may have encouraged inaction in order to gain votes or to terrorize their enemies, and that some military personnel may either be on the payroll of Boko Haram or sympathetic to its agenda.

In mid-August, Nigeria’s new no-nonsense president, a former army commander named Muhammadu Buhari, vowed all that would change.

Buhari promised to wipe out Boko Haram “within three months,” and especially for Christians, it’s tempting to want to believe it. Yet for many, the war that defines their attitude isn’t so much the one between the government and Boko Haram, but rather the one that pits hope against experience.

Often, that translates into skepticism vis-à-vis Buhari’s pledge.

“I think it’s just a typically empty political statement,” said Samson Tsok, who lives in the north central Nigerian state of Plateau that’s been an epicenter of Muslim/Christian clashes for the past 15 years…

Read it all

Boko Haram is trying to expand its activities beyond Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, to include the commercial capital Lagos, as well as other parts of the country, officials say.

Nigeria’s intelligence agency says 12 members of the Islamist militant group have been arrested in Lagos since July.

It is not possible to independently verify details of the statement.

Read it all.

Aisha Yesufu is the chairwoman of the strategic committee of the Bring Back Our Girls campaign in Abuja.

“We keep on hoping that the girls will be found. We will keep up the fight, there will be no retreat, no surrender on the Chibok girls until each one of them is accounted for,” she told DW.

Activists have organized numerous events this week to mark the 500 days of the disappearance of the more than 200 girls. They included Muslim and Christian prayer services, a tree planting ceremony and a march through Abuja.

Read it all

The BBC’s John McManus says Archbishop [Josiah] Idowu-Fearon, who is the new secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, has a strong reputation for promoting dialogue between Christians and Muslims.
But the archbishop told our correspondent that efforts to maintain unity were undermined by some fellow Christians who failed to engage with their Muslim counterparts.
“We warned the leadership in my country, the Christian Association of Nigeria: ‘Let us listen to the Muslim leadership, because the leadership is not in support of Boko Haram.’
“‘Oh no no no,’ they said, ‘they are always deceiving us. They are all the same,'” he said.

Read it all.

The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion on Tuesday asked President Muhammadu Buhari to order the closure of schools opened without compliance to due process in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

This was contained in an open letter signed by the Bishop, Diocese of Kubwa, Anglican Communion, Abuja, Rt. Rev. Duke T. Akamisoko, and addressed to President Buhari, a copy of which was obtained by this reporter in Abuja.

The clergyman, who is also an educationist, noted the arbitrary opening and running of private schools within the Federal Capital Territory”Ž without following standard guidelines and regulations.

Read it all.

Boko Haram Islamists shot dead at least nine people and set homes on fire in a raid on two villages in conflict-hit northeastern Nigeria, fleeing residents told AFP on Thursday.

All nine victims were gunned down with assault rifles as the jihadis attacked Tadagara around 10:30 pm (2130 GMT), looting thatch-roofed mud homes and shops before setting them ablaze, according to witnesses.

“Boko Haram gunmen came on motorcycles and opened fire on the village after we had retired for the night and killed nine residents,” Tadagara villager ”ŽShuaibu Nuhu told AFP.

Read it all.

For many reasons, then, Boko Haram is a significant and threatening phenomenon, which demands explanation. It is valuable to have Virginia Comolli’s thoughtful and wide-ranging account of the movement, which draws on extensive conversations with Nigerians of many backgrounds, apart from archival work. As with any study of a current topic, her book runs the risk of becoming obsolete the moment it appears in print, but it is nevertheless a very useful overview. Surprisingly, many aspects of this strictly contemporary movement are fiercely debated and poorly understood, and Comolli is a sure-footed guide through the scholarly battlegrounds.

She roots the insurgency in some very old-established traditions within North African Islam. Long before the arrival of British colonialism, the lands that became northern Nigeria were ruled by proud sultanates and emirates, of which Kano was the most celebrated. One of the great events in that history was the sweeping jihad movement undertaken at the start of the 19th century by the visionary Fulani reformer Usman dan Fodio. Islamic memories survived powerfully under the British, who worked closely with local political and religious authorities.
That historical legacy is cherished up to the present day, providing an ideological vehicle for popular disenchantment and resistance. Comolli rightly points out that Boko Haram did not spring from nowhere in 2002, but grew out of a series of Islamist, Wahhabi, and fundamentalist sects and student movements that had been flourishing from the 1970s onward. Islamic insurgencies are nothing new to Nigeria, and neither are charismatic and prophetic leaders.

I offer one criticism of an excellent book, namely that Comolli is so focused on tracing the tangled origins of Boko Haram that she underplays the larger political, ethnic, and religious picture, and specifically the role of Christianity. Undoubtedly, she knows that story very well, but most non-specialist readers will not, and they need to be told. A case can be made that Boko Haram is the most aggressive and acute form of a sweeping anti-Christian protest movement.

Read it all.

At least eight people were killed and about 100 others were kidnapped by suspected Boko Haram militants in an overnight raid on a village near Cameroon’s northern border, a local government and a military source said.

Tchakarmari, the village targeted early on Tuesday, lies north of Maroua, where dozens of people were killed in a series of suicide bombings by the Nigerian Islamist group last month.

“Residents said the attackers headed back to Nigeria where Cameroon is not allowed to pursue them,” the local government source in the Far North region said.

Read it all.

The radical Islamist group Boko Haram has intensified its suicide bombing attacks in northern Nigeria and Cameroon in recent weeks.

On Friday (31 July) a massive bomb exploded in the market in Maiduguri, north-eastern Nigeria ”“ the traditional heartland of Boko Haram violence. At least six died, and 11 were injured.

The previous Saturday (25 July), 20 people were killed when a 12-year-old girl blew herself up in a crowded bar in Maroua, northern Cameroon. Seventy-nine others were injured.

However, on 2 August the Nigerian military said it had rescued 178 people ”“ including 101 children and 67 women ”“ taken captive by Boko Haram in the northern Nigerian state of Borno.

Read it all.

ABUJA, NIGERIA (BosNewsLife)– Islamic militant group Boko Haram is stepping up attacks in heavily Christian towns and village in Nigeria’s troubled northeast, killing more than 750 people since May 29, Christian rights activists say.

News of the violence came after Boko Haram militants were pushed back by Nigeria’s military when they tried to to gain access to Maiduguri, Borno State’s largest city.

“The increase in terrorist violence can be seen partly as Boko Haram’s challenge to [Nigerian] President [Muhammadu] Buhari’s campaign statement that he would end the insurgency within three months,” said Voice Of the Martyrs Canada (VOMC), a Christian aid and advocacy group.

Now calling itself the ‘West African Province of the Islamic State’, this “terrorist group has also pledged allegiance” to Islamic State in March of 2015 — “responding to the call to ‘make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels’,”VOMC told BosNewsLife in a statement.

Christian observers say that Boko Haram’s strategy includes inciting fellow Muslims against Christians…

Read it all

Nigeria felt slighted when President Obama overlooked the vast nation on his first African trip as head of state in 2009, instead visiting its shrimp-sized neighbor, Ghana, where he lauded the smaller country’s democratic achievements.

Obama left Nigeria out again in his 2013 visit to Africa. Now, as he prepares for his third and likely final trip to the continent as president, Nigeria is once more being bypassed in favor of Kenya and Ethiopia.

If democratic achievements play a role in the president’s itinerary, Nigerians may be wondering: Why?

Read it all.

At least 49 people were killed and dozens injured when twin blasts struck a market in the northeast Nigerian city of Gombe on Thursday, rescue workers said.

The first explosion took place outside a packed footwear shop around 1620 GMT, followed by a second explosion just minutes later, said Badamasi Amin, a local trader who counted at least three bodies.

He said the area at the time was crowded with customers doing some last-minute shopping on the eve of the Eid festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Read it all.

It has been a deadly July in Nigeria. More than 200 people have been killed since June 30 in attacks that have come almost daily in the country’s northern and northeastern regions, stronghold of the militant Islamic sect Boko Haram.

Obscured by Boko Haram’s headlines, violence also has raged farther south, where a lesser reported, years-long campaign has claimed thousands of Christian lives. Militants among the ethnic Fulani, a predominantly Muslim and nomadic population of cattle herders, are suspected of killing dozens of Christians in the states of Plateau and Taraba in recent months. The two states form the eastern end of Nigeria’s “Middle Belt” — the handful of states straddling the pre-colonial line dividing Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north from its Christian south.

The Middle Belt’s most recent violence traces back to March, to a case of cattle rustling….

Read it all.

When President Buhari was sworn-in, Nigerians must have expected to hear broadcasts like “every past political office holder should report to the nearest Police Station”. Yet instead, it has been a quiet, slow, and seemingly irresponsive Buhari that has been impossible to predict as the nation is gripped by anxiety.

Nigerians expecting a quick and decisive fix were already deriding the President for being “slow and indecisive”, and refusing to understand that much more important in finding solutions to the problems of the country is the difficult and often slow task of articulating a plan, based on an ideological framework. Even if you had plans to hit the ground running, it matters where you hit ground.

The fact that the activity of the group gained momentum after Buhari’s inaugural pronouncement and slow moves to start off, shows the fundamental need to address the challenge from the root cause. The radicalisation of adherents, and their commitment to their faith-based mission, gives it ability to mutate, splinter, break up into cells and continue with the objective to spread terror. One can assume that momentum gained earlier has been lost due to the delay in determining the new order. One can understand the import of anxieties of the erstwhile service chiefs who Nigerians expected would have been rested long ago. President Buhari it is believed has, by now, received a proper briefing of why the Government did so poorly against the insurgents. Who would tell this better than the men in the situation room, the sacked Service Chiefs? Albeit, it was natural for insurgents to exploit such impasse to revive their deadly attacks that we are witnessing. There seemed to be a letting down of the guard.

Read it all.

Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian president, has sacked the country’s army, air force and naval chiefs after allegations of widespread human rights abuses by troops and a surge in violence by Boko Haram insurgents in the north of the country.

Mr Buhari, a former military dictator who ran Nigeria with an iron fist in the 1980s, had pledged in his inauguration speech in May to reform the armed forces but criticism of his failure to fulfil the pledge after almost two months in office was starting to grow.

The president has also moved Nigeria’s defence command centre to Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram, and has been pushing for the rapid deployment of a new, regional military force to combat the jihadi sect.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Cameroon’s army has repulsed an attack by Boko Haram and killed three of the Nigerian Islamist militants in heavy fighting in the Far North region of the country, a Cameroon government spokesman said on Thursday.

The attack represented a change of tactics by the militants following a series of battlefield defeats this year in which they have lost territory to a regional force that comprises Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, spokesman Issa Tchiroma said.

“Early Tuesday morning around 3.:40 a.m. (0140 GMT) an enemy column in four-wheel drive vehicles opened fire on positions held by our defense forces,” he said of the attack in Bodo town.

Read it all.