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One week after the
bomb blast that killed 13 people at the Suleja office of the
Independent National Electoral Commission, no arrests have been made.
The Niger State police command awaits the findings of the forensic
team, which came in the second day of the blast.

Almost every day
since the bombing, NEXT has called on the police to find out what
progress has been made, and has come to expect the stock reply, “We are
still investigating.” Yesterday, exactly one week after the bombing,
the state police public relations officer, Richard Adamu Oguche, said
that no real progress had been made in the case. “We have made no
arrests,” he said, matter-of-factly.

A few days ago, his
senior colleague Shola Amore, an assistant commissioner of police who
is also the force’s public relations officer, said he could not say
what progress had been made on the case because the case falls under
the jurisdiction of the Niger State police command. “Let me get back to
you after I speak to the police public relation officer in Minna,” he
said.

He didn’t, but that is not surprising since there was nothing to report.

Scene of the crime
There is none of the usual care which one has come to expect in a high
crime situation like this. When NEXT visited in the morning, although
there was a banner clearly demarcating the site where the bomb went
off, people were allowed to roam the grounds freely, effectively
contaminating evidence. Shoes, toothbrushes and even loaves of bread
merged with blood and sand.

A UN observer even
posed by the wall which was blasted when the bomb went off, and urged
his driver to take a series of photos of him, perhaps to send to his
sponsors in Europe as proof of his enterprise.

Asked what progress
had been made in the investigation, an assistant commissioner of
police, Kunle Asafa, who was there the following morning, replied, “I
am not an expert. The experts have come and gone,” he said.

The National Youth
Service Corps has also been circumspect. The NYSC coordinator in Niger
State, Dauda Daniel Dauda, recently said at a press conference that the
names of the 10 victims of the blast would be sent to INEC headquarters
for the payment of their indemnity. But he was also more concerned
about emphasising that two serving youth corps members died, because
the rest were no longer corps members since they had finished their
service and were only waiting to participate in the election as
officials.

The
director-general of the NYSC was similarly concerned enough to make
this distinction when he came to see the victims at the dilapidated
Suleja General Hospital where 39 people were rushed after the blast.
Muharazi Ismaila Tsiga told reporters that most of the dead were no
longer youth corps members as reported in the media. According to him,
“two of our serving members died and eight were injured.” He said the
rest were ex-service people.

Confusion
everywhere The impression that only two people died in the blast
worried reporters who have consistently reported a death rate of over
10. On the night of the blast itself, this reporter counted 11 dead;
the harried compound nurse, Martina Dawo, said that she saw 10 dead
bodies.

Mr Tsiga had not
visited the mortuary. Even as he spoke, the bodies of eight youth, six
of them female, were still lying on the mortuary ground, their noses
stuffed with cotton wool. The mortuary attendant, who reluctantly gave
us access, said they were listed as ‘corpers’.

The Suleja hospital
was a sight to behold on the day of the blast. The place is simply not
equipped to handle such a catastrophe. The few doctors there strived to
dress wounds but most of the trauma was beyond them. A young man with
shattered limbs, who was placed on a bed as hospital staff arranged for
ambulance, fell off and died. There were too few ambulances to take the
more seriously injured to the hospital in Abuja; vehicles arrived too
late for some.

A lab specialist at
the hospital, Chris Okuludo, who looked quite dazed by the scene that
day, said, “It is not that our doctors are not good. But we don’t have
the equipment to treat this type of cases. And because of other
reasons, the ambulances arrived two hours after the patients came.” He
was also here one month ago when a bomb went off in Suleja during a PDP
rally. “This is worse,” he said. “This is more.” The hospital could not
even cater for the dead. “We don’t have a functional mortuary. Our
light here is not stable. We have no facility to embalm the bodies,”
said a doctor who prefered not to be named. “We are planning to move
the bodies to Gwagwalada Specialist Hospital.” Whodunit?

A police officer,
who did not want to be named, explained his theory of what happened. “I
think that what happened was this: As the corpers gathered by the wall
to check their posting, the bomb man who must have been carrying a bag
and passing by the fence dropped the thing on the ground, [on] the
other side of the wall, and took off.” Pressed for more detail, he said
he was not connected with the investigation. He also said the corps
members could have been saved if they had not been sent out of the
office area where the list was originally pasted. “They became too
rowdy and so the civil servants took the board with the list here by
the gate to avoid the nuisance,” he said.

At the hospital,
many of the grieving relatives of the victims seemed to think that
politicians were responsible. One of the victims, 26-year-old Aminu
Mojid who is a serving corps member said, “If these politicians wanted
to kill themselves they should go ahead. But why involve us? We are
just here to do our duty.” Even the Niger State acting attorney
general, Abdul Bawa, seemed to believe the bombing, like a previous
one, was politically motivated.

“This power that we seek is only going to last a short while anyway.
Why would they kill all these young people just because of elections?
It is tragic.” ‘We will go on’ Nearly every victim who survived the
blast and was interviewed said they had no regrets serving this nation.
“I have no regrets at all,” said Haruna Suleman from his hospital bed.
“We are only praying that this sort of thing should not happen again.
We need reorientation in this country.” Asked whether it was proper to
keep using youth corps members for election duties, Mr Tsiga responded
“Yes, of course. We will never allow the enemies of progress to
distract us. Corps members are Nigerians and we must continuously give
them the opportunity to ensure that Nigeria remains united.”