Remember just a few days ago this blog reported that the President of Nigeria had declared victory and claimed he had kept his promise to defeat the Boko Haram (Death to western education) Islamic terrorist insurrection in the west African state which is the most heavily populated on the African continent.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari says that his armed forces have met the December deadline set for defeating the jihadi terror group Boko Haram and that the Islamists are no longer capable of mounting a serious attack against the Nigerian military or population centers. The oft quoted words of Mandy Raice Davis, a prostitute involved in a 1960s political scandal spring to mind. "He would say that wouldn't he?" Unfortunately nobody seems to have told Boko Haram of President Buhari's heroic victory
Ironically, on Wednesday (23 December), just after buhari told the world he had defeated Boko Haram we learned from reliable news feeeds (Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Boko Haram rebels carried out four attacks on villages in Niger, Chad and Cameroon, killing at least seven people including two soldiers and three civilians in Niger’s southern border town of Abadam.
And now we learn that Boko Haram Islamic extremists yesterday (28 December) struck a city, Maiduguri, the capital of the state of Borno, and a town in northeastern Nigeria with rocket-propelled grenades and multiple suicide bombers Monday, killing at least 80 people, according to eye witnesses.
At least 30 more were killed and more than 90 wounded in overnight blasts and shootouts, and an additional 20 died in a bombing outside a mosque at dawn Monday, said Muhammed Kanar, area coordinator of the National Emergency Management Agency.
A pair of suicide bombers also killed at least 30 people in Madagali, a town 95 miles southeast of Maiduguri, witnesses said.
The attacks appear to be a direct challenge to President Muhammadu Buhari's declaration last week that Nigerian security forces have "technically won the war" against Boko Haram and that it is now capable of no more than suicide bombings on soft targets. As a response it is typical in style of the way Boko Haram operate.
Maiduguri, with a population of about 1 million people, hosts almost as many refugees — among the 2.5 million people driven from their homes in the 6-year-old Islamic uprising. About 20,000 people have been killed in Nigeria and hundreds others elsewhere as the insurgents have carried their conflict across its borders into Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
The military said there had been multiple attacks at four southwestern entry points to Maiduguri.
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