Stark encounters with teen female suicide bombers

The policemen who were stationed at the Eid prayer ground near North-West University in Kofar-Nasarawa in the ancient city of Kano were astonished when a teenage girl, clad in a brown hijab, walked confidently and hurriedly towards them where they were stationed in order to monitor the activities in the environment.Apparently unsuspecting that danger was […]

The policemen who were stationed at the Eid prayer ground near North-West University in Kofar-Nasarawa in the ancient city of Kano were astonished when a teenage girl, clad in a brown hijab, walked confidently and hurriedly towards them where they were stationed in order to monitor the activities in the environment.
Apparently unsuspecting that danger was approaching them, the policemen handled her presence with levity. When she got too close for comfort, the policemen queried her.  But rather than stop, she kept moving towards them. Speaking to Sunday Trust on their encounter with the young lady, who later became a suicide bomber, one of the policemen said when the girl refused to stop, they activated their guns.
“At first, we thought she wanted to come and give us a report about a security breach around the place, but when she moved quickly towards us, we all activated our guns. Yet, she didn’t stop,” the policeman said.  “When we asked her to stop, she refused. She rather told us in Hausa that if we wanted to kill her we should.”
The policeman said it was while the conversation was going on that a loud bang tore through the air, such that they all had to dive to take cover.
“We took cover, but we all sustained injuries. We went down flat because we were afraid that her colleagues may be nearby,” he said.
Contrary to an earlier report that the female suicide bombers activated bombs from their armpit, the policeman told our reporter that the teenager’s  two hands were by her sides when the explosion occurred.
The policeman described the girl as slim, tall and fair in complexion and that her spoken Hausa was good.
“The way she spoke to us in Hausa, that we should kill her if we wanted, showed that she had a good grasp of the language,” he said.
The encounter between policemen and a teenage female suicide bomber was the first to hit the already traumatised city of Kano. The trend had started in Gombe when on June 8, 2014 the first female suicide bomber occurred. However in that case, it was a middle-aged woman who detonated an explosive wrapped round her body at the 301 Battalion of the Nigerian Army Base in Gombe. The explosion killed her and one soldier. The woman was walking towards the Quarter Guard of the 301 Artillery Regiment barracks, located along the busiest Gombe- Biu Road after alighting from a motorbike when two soldiers stopped her for a search. She suddenly hugged one soldier and the bomb went off, killing her and the soldier. The other soldiers with them sustained injuries, witnesses said.
Since last Sunday, no fewer than five explosions have been recorded in Kano in six days.  All of them were carried out by female teenagers, believed to be between the ages of 14 and 16 years. In all, 25 persons were killed and 60 others were injured, with civilians being the highest casualty.  One soldier and a policeman were killed.  The female bomber was believed to be 16 years old, according to analysis done on her remains by security.
As the police were struggling with their injured personnel, another explosion rocked the St. Charles Catholic Family Parish in Sabon Gari area of the state. It occurred at a when worshippers were coming out from the place of worship after the day’s service.
Five persons died on the spot, among them a soldier who was on duty at the church. Two others were injured.
While security said the explosive was tossed from a nearby primary school, the church’s officials said it was carried out by a female suicide bomber who pretended to be a worshipper.
While hosting officials of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), an assistant priest in the church, Father Val Fadegnon said, “A woman was seen attempting to enter the church while worshippers were coming out. She was holding a book like the Bible. The soldier at the gate was interrogating her when the bomb exploded, killing the soldier and four others on the spot,” he said.
The priest added that though a bomb was also tossed from the primary school opposite the church, it did not detonate as claimed by security officials. According to him, while worshippers were scampering for safety from the suicide bomber explosion, another bomb was tossed from a primary school opposite the church.
“We were lucky that the bomb did not detonate. It could have caused more harm than the first one. The bomber went to the school in a wheelchair, pretending to be a cripple and that was why he was allowed in by the securitymen at the gate. He went with one other person who was pushing the wheelchair,” he said.
The police confirmed that two female heads were picked at the scene of the blast. In all subsequent suicide bombings, the head of the perpetrators were seen at the scene of the explosion.
Last Monday, two other teen female suicide bombers struck in the state. The first one blew herself up at the NNPC mega station in Hotoro area of the state, around 10.00am, killing three others, including an attendant.
A security guard at the filling station said the female suicide bomber disguised as if she wanted to buy kerosene and that after joining the queue she detonated the explosive.
“She was carrying a gallon, like all other women at the filling station, as she was approaching the kerosene pump. She detonated the bomb from her dress. Nobody noticed her because almost all those on the queue were women,” he said.
Speaking on her hospital bed one of the victims, Hadiza Dauda, 45, said she was on queue approaching the pump when the bomb exploded.
“I wouldn’t know whether the bomber was the one in my front or at my back, because I was thrown to the other side of the filling station when the bomb was detonated. I just saw myself topless and I was shouting for help, but nobody came as they were all scampering for safety. Almost all parts of my body were affected because I was close to the pump,” the widow said.
Around 1.15pm, another female suicide bomber blew up herself up at the gate of the Kano Trade Fair Complex behind Shoprite where hundreds of persons trooped to for the sallah celebration. Our reporter learnt that the teenager wore a black hijab and was seen carrying a food flask. She detonated the bomb while she was being searched with a metal detector.
“When she was stopped at the gate, she told the security that she was taking her food inside the complex that she would eat during the programme.  So she was allowed to pass the first security man, but when the man with the metal detector was searching her with the equipment, she struck,” he said. Although she died alone, she injured 13 persons and her remains littered the entrance of the complex.
One of the victims was a 14-year-old boy, Ahmed Usman, who hails from Kudan in Kaduna State. He said he was about to enter into the complex after paying the N200 gate fee when the person behind him detonated the explosive.
On Tuesday, there were no cases of explosion but the shock of the previous cases forced residents to stay indoors even as many megastores, including the Ado Bayero Mall, which housed the famous Shoprite, were closed. The following day, however, another teen female suicide bomber spoilt the show as she blew herself up where students of the Kano State Polytechnic were checking their NYSC postings. Hundreds of students who had completed their Higher National Diploma (HND) had converged to check their NYSC mobilisation list, which was pasted on that day. A security guard at the polytechnic told Sunday Trust that he had seen the teen suicide bomber before she struck.
“I was controlling traffic where the students were parking their cars when I saw a dark-skinned girl loitering around the area. She wore a black hijab, but my attention was taken off her when I was assigned to do something inside the school. It was shortly after I left that the explosion occurred. It was after the explosion that I discovered that the face of the suicide bomber was the same with the young girl I saw earlier. If not because I was reassigned, I would have asked her why she was there. She did not look like someone from this part of the country,” he said.
Two female suicide bombers were captured in Funtua, Katsina State as Kano was suffering from an overdose of suicide attacks.
Eye witnesses said the police had suspected a vehicle at a check point and decided to flag it down, but the driver rather drove dangerously away. However, the youths around the area helped in capturing the suspect. An eye witness said, “Not long after Isha’i prayers, a Honda CRV entered Tudun Wada on a high speed, which attracted the attention of people on the street. The driver abruptly parked the car and attempted to board a motorcycle, saying that policemen were after him.
One of the youths immediately called the police and before their arrival the man was seriously beaten, as he attempted to escape.”
The eyewitness further narrated that to douse the unrelenting effort of the youths to capture him, the suspect began to spray N1,000 notes, while attempting to escape with his accomplices, two teenage girl.
Another witness added when it was apparent that the man had collapsed, the two girls with him were also apprehended. They cried thus: “Umar Tafiya Za kayi Kabarmu,’’ meaning “Umar, are you leaving us.”
The witnesses added that one of the boys searched the girls’ bodies and found wires and other items suspected to be bomb switches. They explained that the equipment was disconnected and the car was searched. The young men found some detonating materials, suspected to be bombs in the vehicle. According to them, the police came to the scene and arrested the driver and the two girls, while a team of security men returned to detonate the bombs.

How Boko Haram got teenage girls for suicide missions
Findings by Sunday Trust have shown that some of the girls that blew themselves up in Kano State  may be  among the hundreds of women kidnapped in parts of Borno  and Yobe States since the Boko Haram insurgency escalated in the last two years. Within this period, hundreds of girls and women have been abducted by the Boko Haram insurgents but the issue of kidnappings in the ravaged North-East part of Nigeria only drew national and international attention on April 14 when 276 girls were taken away from Government Girls Secondary Chibok in Borno State.
It was also gathered that the deployment of girls, aged between 16 and 19 and even those below the age of 10 may be another strategy to attract international outrage so that the Federal Government could be compelled to release top commanders of the sect in various detention facilities, a credible source said.
A legal practitioner, Barrister Abubakar Sadiq said the use of girls in the suicide missions in Kano unveils a new trend by the terrorists to press home their demands.
“The fact is, besides using the girls as human shield in their various camps, the terrorists are really disturbed that they could not forcefully rescue some of their commanders. My fear is that if something urgent is not done, they would gradually use all the girls in their hands for suicide missions,” he said.
Apart from the Chibok girls, dozens of women have been whisked away by the Boko Haram and are yet to return. Many have been reportedly ferried across the Nigerian borders, while  many others have been fully indoctrinated and are doing the biddings of the insurgents, including serving as couriers for movement of arms and ammunitions, as well as doing  domestic chores like cooking  and washing in various camps and enclaves.
A security source told our correspondent that most of the girls used recently for the suicide mission were not aware that they would die.
“I can assure you that most of the kidnapped girls were not aware of what has been happening…they have no access to radio, TV or cell phones. Those sent on suicide missions were not told that they would be deployed for such acts and did not have access to the remote control being used to detonate the explosives,” he said.
Security sources hinted that it is these girls and dozens of others, who are marked for the purpose of suicide bombings in many places.
The source revealed that: “You may not know that attempts to use some of these girls for suicide missions in places like Maiduguri, Damaturu, Potiskum, Bauchi, Kaduna, Katsina, Jos and other places were averted. The terrorists could not carry out the nefarious act because of many factors, including security measures put in place during the Sallah season.”
According to him, “What happened in Kano could be described as isolated incidences,” he said.
In Maiduguri, for instance, two days after the Muslim fasting ended, the Youth Vigilantes, also known as Civilian JTF, alerted that some 40 suspected Boko Haram members, including women, had been sneaked into the state capital for the purpose of killing and destroying places with explosives.
“Yes, the insurgents had made attempts to wreak havoc, but God did not allow them to execute the evil intention,” Muhammed Gava, a senior official of the vigilantes, said.
Part of the initiative of security forces in Maiduguri was the banning of vehicular movements throughout the Sallah period, a development that forced residents to trek.
Even after the Sallah festivities, the Borno State police command issued a statement advising residents to be wary of unsuspecting women that cover their bodies with hijab (cloth worn by ladies).
A statement signed by the Command’s spokesman, Gideon Jibrin, a DSP said, “The command…cautions residents to be wary of strange females wearing hijabs and moving around crowded places as some of them may be hiding explosives in their undergarments with the intention of causing harm to unsuspecting residents. Residents who sight such persons should immediately alert the relevant security operatives for proper action,” the statement said.
For now, even innocent Muslim women who are used to wearing the Hijab before going out of their houses are gradually setting them aside for other light veils, a development which some clerics believe is a serious setback for Islam.

What is the motivation for Nigeria’s female suicide bombers?
With the unleashing of an arsenal of female suicide bombers on Kano last week, the general public has been thrown into fear about its safety, more than ever before – since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency five years ago.
More worrisome, is the evidence from the successful attacks in Kano that the group has mastered the technology of “miniaturizing” the explosives, such that they could be concealed under clothing. “This was not the case with previous suicide attacks in the country, where bomb-laden vehicles are driven into targets by suicide bombers,” an expert said.
“Another danger that is evident in this type of attack is the indiscriminate use of the female suicide bombers preponderantly against unsuspecting civilian targets.  A lady does not elicit suspicion naturally as an average man would do. So by using young girls, they are further relaxing the alertness barriers in people, so that when these bomb-carriers melt into crowd, they are least expected to be the source of any threat. It is an innocent way of delivering a lethal weapon,” the expert added.
The security expert blamed Nigeria’s “inability” to clinically investigate the first female suicide attack in the North-East, which, he said, would have helped nip the use of female suicide bombers in the bud.
Already, the renewed attacks in Kano have rekindled issues around the abduction of Chibok girls, with many Nigerians coming to the conclusion that the sect was indoctrinating the captives and deploying them for suicide missions.
A senior military officer who is working with security teams on the activities of Boko Haram, told the Sunday Trust that the rumours may, in fact, have an iota of truth, saying even if the teenage attackers were not among the abducted Chibok girls, they could be other girls that the sect had kidnapped earlier in Yobe or other parts of the North-East.
The military officer said the girls could be coerced into carrying the bombs on their bodies after being threatened with death or other punishments like “threat of abduction of their family members.
Investigations have shown that some of the group’s fighters are sent for attacks under duress, as the punishment for refusing to obey is death. They have seen how their fellows who attempted to escape were slaughtered,” he said.
Another theory that security agents have come up with is the possibility of the girls being controlled through diabolical means to carryout the attack. “It is also not impossible for them to use certain means to control the minds of the girls and order them to carry out certain actions which ordinarily they would not do,” he explained.
There is also the tendency that they were deceived or lied to, he pointed out, explaining that, “a girl who has been kidnapped for months will naturally be home sick, so when she is strapped with a bag containing explosives and told to go to the police to take her home, she may blindly believe, thinking she is carrying her personal effect.
“It could be that she was asked to join a queue and buy something. She may not know what she was carrying and she may not be the one to detonate it, as the person who pulls the trigger is always nearby.
“We have seen what happened during the suicide bombing of Pakistan’s naval base. The man who was carrying the explosives tried to send people away from himself before it went up. Apparently, he was forced to do it,” he said.
Equally, the officer held that some of the girls would have been convinced to execute the mission, especially if they are dependants of dead sect members. “It is possible to brainwash them about avenging the death of their fathers or brothers. They are deaths that are emotional and can make the bereaved susceptible to being pushed to take revenge, especially when such killings are shown to them to have been done unjustly by state actors,” the officer explained.
As the nation and its security agents are engrossed in search for answers and solutions to the new and deadly prowl of female suicide bombers, security experts said the only headway that has been achieved, was the arrest in Funtua of three suspects. “They would help us understand who the girls are, where they are kept and who trained them,” a security officer explained.