•Soldiers kill TCN staff, injure others
mistaken for insurgents in Borno
Michael Olugbode in Maiduguri and Seriki
Adinoyi in Jos ̢۬
Determined to seek practical ways of ending
the Boko Haram insurgency, the Borno State
Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, yesterday
reiterated his call for the granting of pardon
through a programme of amnesty to the
deadly Boko Haram sect.
His call coincided with the lucky escape
yesterday from death by worshippers at the
Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), Jos,
when two bombs planted in the church were
discovered and defused before they could
explode.
Shettima said the recent attempt by 16
members of the terror group to renounce
"the murderous ideology is one key proof that
an amnesty programme targeted at creating
an exit window for forcefully conscripted
members is capable of reducing the number
of Boko Haram fighters".
Shettima's support for an amnesty programme
for the terrorist group was re-emphasised at
an interactive session organised by his Special
Adviser on Communications and Strategy,
Mallam Isa Gusau, with selected journalists in
Abuja.
Gusau said Shettima's call was scientific and
had been vindicated by a very desperate
effort of Boko Haram leaders to stop their
fighters from leaving their fold when a group
of 16 members renounced the sect's ideology
in Borno State following which they were
slaughtered by the sect's leaders.
He said: "Governor Kashim Shettima was
misunderstood by many Nigerians when in his
May 29 inaugural remarks revisited his stance
on the need to apply a political solution to
fighting the Boko Haram by way of granting a
window to admit those willing to surrender
their arms and renounce the Boko Haram
ideology.
"Shettima has held this position from his
campaign days ahead of the 2011 elections
for his first term. He had always advocated a
combination of three approaches, which are:
the military which is what we have in place,
an economic approach which is aimed at
providing jobs for people and discourage
citizens that Boko Haram terrorists are
recruiting."
Gusau said numerous arrests that were made
by the military had shown that the economy
plays a vital role in breeding insurgency.
He said Shettima's third approach at resolving
the Boko Haram insurgency and perhaps the
most contentious is the political approach
which in simple terms means pardon for
terrorists who are willing to drop their arms
and embrace peace.
He said: "It is important to note that the
governor has always advocated that the three
approaches should be applied together not
exclusively. However, the amnesty issue has
been the controversial one. The governor is
not really talking about dialogue as a start,
what he is advocating is to create an opening
for those ready to abandon the sect to be able
to do so freely, so that the sect can be
broken.
"He is very particular about hundreds, if not
thousands of members that were conscripted
or forced to join the sect and became killers
against their wish. If attacks on all
communities can be efficiently done, then
there wouldn't be need for any debate on
amnesty but we all have seen that many
communities have continued to suffer from
these attacks because the communities are so
much, not only in Borno but round Nigeria
and we don't have the right proportion of
security personnel to secure all communities."
He lamented that: "When insurgents attack
communities, they mostly target male youths,
they arrest them and guard them into bushes.
In most cases, even before taking them out of
the towns they attacked, they preach in
support of their ideology with promises of
heaven for adherents and then openly ask
aloud if any of the youths is willing to join
them or not and whoever said he is not ready
to join them, they slaughter him right there
sometimes in the presence of his parents or
they lay them on row and shoot all of them in
matter of seconds targeting their skulls.
"We have seen many of these instances in
videos recorded in Gwoza and other parts of
Borno State."
"Now, what Governor Kashim Shettima has
been saying is that hundreds of these
forcefully arrested and initiated young men
may want to run away and drop their arms
and there should be a policy and programme
to admit them so that insurgents lose
members and their strategy of arresting
youths and forcing them to join them which is
what they apply in sustaining their
membership, can be deflated and I think the
governor's call on May 29 has been vindicated
less than two weeks ago.
"You might have read it on most news
platforms that on Friday, July 3, 2015, Boko
Haram insurgents beheaded 11 of its
members who renounced their ideology.
According to accounts by some locals, what
happened was that some members of the sect
who are indigenes of some villages in Damboa
Local Government Area indicated interest in
abandoning the ideology but most of them
were afraid of the consequences. Out of
them, 16 summoned courage to renounce the
ideology and they moved to Miringa village in
Biu Local Government Area of Southern
Borno. They wanted to join some communities
like Ajigin and Talala in Damboa.
"The 16 insurgents went to Miringa on Friday,
July 3 according to locals, then at night,
commanders of Boko Haram sent a team to
Miringa to fish out the 16 members that
denounced the sect. The team went from
house to house and got the 16 members
intact. They didn't fire any shot in order not
to attract soldiers. They took the members
out of Miringa and slaughtered 11 of them
and went away with five. The bodies of the 11
executed members were found the following
day while the other five were not seen," he
said.
He argued that if the 11 ex-members had
returned to security officials under an
amnesty programme, they probably would
have no choice but to offer information that
could be helpful and they would have to do
that in order to stay alive knowing that their
former colleagues in the sect would come
after them.
Meanwhile, hundreds of worshippers
yesterday morning escaped death at ECWA,
Angwan Yanshi, Tudun Wada near the Federal
Secretariat, Jos, Plateau State, as two
explosives were allegedly recovered and
defused in the church before they went off
during a worship service.
This is coming exactly one week after a
mosque and a restaurant in Jos were rocked
by two explosions that left scores dead and
many others injured.
A witness and member of the church simply
identified as Mr Daniel said one of the
explosives at the church was planted in the
men’s toilet, while the other was recovered
from a corner at the entrance to the church’s
compound and defused by the police anti-
bomb squad.
He added that the one discovered in the toilet
was immediately taken and thrown over the
fence where it eventually exploded. But his
account was controverted by the fact that
there was no sign that there was any explosion
outside the fence where he claimed the bomb
was thrown.
The police spokesman in Plateau, Mr. Abuh
Emmanuel, corroborated the witness’ claim
that the police anti-bomb experts were
immediately deployed in the church where
they defused the bomb at the entrance of the
church, but did not confirm that one had
earlier exploded.
But while the ECWA worshippers were lucky, a
member of staff of Transmission Company of
Nigeria (TCN) was not as lucky as soldiers who
were guarding the Benesheik area of Jos shot
and killed him while injuring three others
including two soldiers who were guiding the
TCN repair crew having mistaken them for
insurgents.
Maiduguri and environs had suffered power
outage for about two months, which
necessitated the team of staff of the TCN
accompanied by military escort on a task to
repair the broken transmission.
A large part of troubled Borno State were
without power for about six months last year
when it was difficult to repair the
transmission line following the activities of
the Islamist group.
The present power outage that has been on
for about two months could have been
corrected about five weeks ago but for a
mishap along Maiduguri/Damboa road when
five soldiers who accompanied a team of
engineers on repair mission of power
installation were killed when their vehicles ran
over landmine planted on the road.
This latest mishap, according to a member of
staff of TCN, Ibrahim Garba, who spoke to
journalists in Maiduguri yesterday, happened
on Saturday causing fears that the hope for
early restoration of electricity supply in the
area may be far.
He said: “The incident occurred when our staff
accompanied by the military who went to
repair a transmission line near Benesheik
were shot at by the military personnel
attached to Benesheik who thought they were
insurgents.
"In the gunshot our driver was killed and
three other persons were injured including
two soldiers."
He lamented that “one of our drivers is still
missing while one of our injured staff and the
two other soldiers are receiving treatment at
the General Hospital, while two vehicles of the
TCN and that of the military were destroyed”.
When the news of the attack filtered into
Maiduguri, the residents were irked by the
action of the military who found it difficult to
communicate with their team and even devise
a strategy of identifying themselves as against
militants.
A Maiduguri resident Abba Aisami said: "It is
unfortunate that this could happen. We have
never heard of the insurgents mistaking
themselves and engaging one another in
gunshots. Why should our soldiers be making
this grievous mistake?
"This is an indication that there is no proper
coordination among the military. If not how
can they send a team from Maiduguri without
communicating with their counterparts in
Benesheik?"