What’s Happening in Nigeria?
January 13, 2015
The terrorist group Boko Haram has struck again in Nigeria, killing over 2,000 people, making this their deadliest massacre to date, and the fear is, they’re not done yet.
The attacks started ten days ago, January 3, 2015 after the Islamic extremist seized a key military base in Baga right on the boarder of Chad.
District head of Baga Abba Hassan said that most of the victims from the Baga attack were women, children and the elderly, as they were not able to run away fast enough from the rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles that the insurgents fired as they entered the town.
Just a week after the senseless attack in Baga, Boko Haram has also be accused of strapping a bomb to a young girl, assumed to be around 10 years old, and sending her into a busy market place. The blast killed about 19 people and injured 18 others when it rocked the small Nigerian city of Maiduguri.
The Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN Africa) has reported that “up to 70 schools in Cameroon’s Far East Region has been forced to close, are damaged or operate intermittently as a result of the recurrent cross-border raids by Boko Haram.” Many government teachers have feared for their lives so much that they have no other choice but to abandon and flee their schools, leaving the students behind with nowhere to go, as more than 20,000 families have also been displaced due to the violence.
This is also not Boko Haram’s first attack on the people of Nigera. Back in 2014, 200 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped by Islamic rebels, suspected to be Boko Haram. Almost a year later, and despite social media outbursts “#BringBackOurGirls”, the girls have still not been returned, and the mothers of these young girls are getting desperate. They are now turning to the United Nations as they are losing hope in the Nigerian government’s ability to find them.
Nigerian officials fear that Boko Haram is again responsible for another kidnapping of 172 woman and children and the deaths of 35 other people during a raid on the Northeast village of Gumsuri. Although no group has claimed responsibility for this particular incident, many believe it mimics the actions played out in the April 2014 kidnapping.
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David Wooley • Jan 14, 2015 at 9:48 am
I think that it is great that you are covering this issue. While the public eye was clearly focused on the tragic events that unfolded in France last week and the national and international response that those events predicated, the massacre that occurred in Nigeria went virtually unnoticed.
I wonder why one event is amplified through the press and the other is muted. In light of that, I applaud your decision to write about it in your publication. Your staff is doing excellent work!
adviser • Jan 15, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Thanks Dave! The student who wrote the article thought the same thing. I guess our society is more sympathetic when the culture being attacked more closely resembles our own. Sad.