Nigeria Content Online

There is a bomb explosion in Borno State
almost every day, according to residents. Sometimes, two bombs go off
in one day, and then there are the executions by guns. Last Saturday,
around 10.30am at the Kasuwan Shanu junction where officers of the joint
task force called Operation Flush have a checkpoint, a bomb went off,
and the officers had to dive into a gutter. The next day at Abaganaram,
Railway junction, a witness said two gunmen went into a Vitafoam
dealership shop and killed the owner, while one of them walked to a
drawer and removed a parcel. On the eve of the governorship election on
Monday, two bombs went off on the outskirts of the city. On Tuesday, at
Umarrari Street, Boko Haram reportedly executed a young man who claimed
to have removed their bomb. On Wednesday, after election results were
announced, Boko Haram reportedly burned down a security post at the
renovated prison. On Thursday, at Kaura Mela, there was a bombing and a
shooting.

“Nothing has happened this Friday yet,”
says a journalist who has lived in the city for 10 years. “But then the
day is not over.”

According to a source close to the police, most of the bombs are planted by young boys known as Almajiris.

“They are not educated, they are
gullible and they have nothing to lose,” he says. “It is a
bastardisation of the learning process enjoined in the Qur’an. Their
parents dump them with the mallams, who send them out to beg for food,
which leaves them open to strong influences.”

According to an officer at the police
headquarters, police are frustrated by the fact that the boys recruited
by Boko Haram have no addresses.

“When you arrest them and ask where they
are from, you hear things like, ‘They brought me here from Katsina,
they brought me from Yobe’, et cetera. Where do you go from there?” says
the state police commissioner. “Some of the boys arrested told me they
could manufacture the improvised explosives themselves. So I tell you,
if all these boys can manufacture explosives, then we are in trouble…
Maiduguri is a warfront.”

On where the Boko Haram recruits get
these skills, Mr Zuokumor says that he has his theories but no hard
evidence. “It all started with the establishment of Boko Haram, but I
cannot pinpoint where yet,” he says. NEXT has learnt from sources that
some of the killers that have been hired for high profile jobs have
largely come from Somalia and the Middle East.