When is Boko Haram not Boko Haram?
It is not surprising that the United Nations is not in haste to buy the Boko Haram claim to this bomb attack. In August 2003, the United Nations office in Baghdad was reportedly attacked by a suicide bomber who drove a yellow and some news channels said a blue-coloured truck through the gates and detonated […]
It is not surprising that the United Nations is not in haste to buy the Boko Haram claim to this bomb attack. In August 2003, the United Nations office in Baghdad was reportedly attacked by a suicide bomber who drove a yellow and some news channels said a blue-coloured truck through the gates and detonated his deadly contents there. The head of the UN mission in Baghdad Sergio de Mello was killed along with 23 others in the attack. Investigations carried out by independent bodies showed that there was no suicide bomb attack at the UN office that afternoon of August 20th 2003. A bomb planted directly below Mr de Mello’s office was detonated by remote control. Though he was in Baghdad for only a few weeks, Sergio de Mello had minced no words in telling the world that Americans must leave Iraq because the invasion itself was illegal.
As someone who had once visited the UN office complex in Abuja, I know for sure that it is impossible for any vehicle to beat that security at whatever speed and get to the building inside successfully. The visitor’s parking lot is situated way outside the entrance gate. Any vehicle attempting to enter the UN building must belong to one of the agencies there or to a staff of one such agency. With the kind of security checks I’ve witnessed during my visit to the UN office three years ago, any car attempting to beat it will have to hit the heavy wrought-iron gate to force its way in, and that would have caused the driver to be shot, if the security staff were worth their name. For this reason I entirely reject the idea of a suicide bomber at the UN office Abuja.
Never mind that the CNN has now told us that Mohammed Abul Barra has been identified as the bomber in an interview with Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa, the truth is that the real masterminds of the attack will not leave any loopholes for people to question their claims. Was it not only two days after 9/11 that the names of 19 Arab Muslims were given as those of the perpetrators? Yet eight months after, the Director of the FBI was still honest enough to say that they were still not sure of the identity of the alleged suicide hijackers. We must not forget that the September 13th list was also controversial because it consisted of the names of people who were alive and well and living outside the US or people who had been dead long before the attack.
It is by now apparent to discerning Nigerians that certain faceless terror groups are using the Boko Haram tag to perpetrate their evil. We now know for sure that some of the arrests made in connection with bombings or attempted bombings in Northern Nigeria were not of Muslim individuals or groups. Here we call to mind the case of Yakubu Bitiyong of Kaduna, Lydia Joseph, who set St. John’s cathedral in Bauchi on fire and the three Christian women arrested in connection with the bomb blast at the Mammy market in Bauchi last July. Needless to say, the reach and sophistication of their methods goes beyond the capability of the rag-tag militia left behind by Mohammed Yusuf. But certain orchestrated events led to the present state of insecurity in Nigeria. We must study them to be able to know the forces at work against us.
On May 3rd 2005, Thisday newspaper had as one of its cover stories the report ‘US Expert: Nigeria may be Al-Qaida’s new haven’. In it we learn that a US intelligence expert who was also one-time ambassador to Nigeria Dr. Princeton Lyman has said tha Al-Qaida had now shifted bases to Nigeria after being successfully chased out of Afghanistan. Quoting a report aired on an American TV station, Thisday reported that an investigation had uncovered ‘Al-Qaida’s surreptitious training and building bases in Nigeria.’ The paper attributed to Dr Lyman the following words ‘You have 60 or more million Muslims in Nigeria. It is the most populous state, and it is a country in which there has been a long history of religious tension. If you wanted to target a state in West Africa, that’s the one you’ll target.’ This might not have sounded like a declaration of intent at the time but events since then have served to point in that direction.
Earlier on in the months following September 11th, the US state department submitted a list of so-called terrorist organisations operating in Nigeria to the Obasanjo government. Most of them were Muslim organisations, but instead of the crackdown on Muslim activists the US had hoped for, common sense prevailed among the top-notchers in the Obasanjo administration, and the only victim of the US hit-list was Al-Mumtadha al-Islami, an international Islamic charity with head office in Kano. The morale behind this is that the US has always wanted to brand Nigeria terrorist haven in order to have the perfect excuse to come in.
If it couldn’t make its way in by way of a direct invasion as in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan, it will make its way in as an investigative expert offering services to unravel the terror mysteries. Since the June 16th attack on the police headquarters we have heard nothing but the way FBI is involved in the investigation. Yet even before that one is concluded, so-called Boko Haram struck again, this time at the UN, the FBI has since landed on the scene. The motive for this desperation to be in Nigeria as opposed to being with Nigeria is the same that took US to Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the same that the led to the staging of the 9/11 terror hoax: the control of Nigeria’s oil resources.
Unfortunately, an increasingly gullible Nigerian public will swallow anything especially if it comes from the US. This is why even the identity of Abul Barra had to come to us through the CNN. The orchestrators know only this will make it believable. As for the two Babaganas paraded by the police a few days ago, they were mere pawns in the game of officially-backed conspiracies. If they were arrested on 18th of last month, how could their interrogation not have prevented the atrocity committed a week later?
In many ways they remind me of Zacarias Moussaoui who was arrested in the US in August 2001, on charges of moving around with an expired visa. By the time 9/11 was staged, he was elevated to the rank of the 20th hijacker. Though two other 20th hijackers had since been produced, Ramzy bin Alshayb of Pakistan and Muhammad al Qahtani of Saudi Arabia (also known as Detainee 063 at Guantanamo) it is Moussaoui who was eventually convicted of the crime. So called UN-bombing Mastermind Mohammed Nur also falls into the same category, another pawn in the game while the real terrorists walk free.
While we pray hard that these evil geniuses will be exposed wherever and whoever they are, we must also pray that they never succeed in killing innocent souls again using Boko Haram or any other name. And we all know the American penchant for staging big events to eclipse other issues. The second killing of Al-Zarqawi was staged to eclipse the heinous murder of 24 members of one family by American soldiers in Haditha, Iraq; The second killing of Bin Laden, who had been dead since, was also staged to save Obama’s birther and popularity skin. Could this UN bombing have anything to do with the arrest of an alleged American child trafficker who was caught with 15 under-aged children stuffed into a Golf car? Mrs Barrera desperately tried to elude arrest until she was overpowered by the police. Two days later the bombs went off at the UN office. May God let us know the real Boko Haram!