Will we follow her lead this time?

This is not to say that we have resolved the mystery of where the male bombers were being sourced, but it is to accept that when a delicate teenage girl is ready to end her life in such a dastardly way, it is a bigger cause for concern any day.When they made their debut on […]

This is not to say that we have resolved the mystery of where the male bombers were being sourced, but it is to accept that when a delicate teenage girl is ready to end her life in such a dastardly way, it is a bigger cause for concern any day.
When they made their debut on the Nigerian scene, several months ago, some of us even feared that these young female bombers might be from among the missing Chibok school girls; because we couldn’t think of any other supply chain. This is why the capture of Zahra’u Babangida, as horrible as the discovery was, was still a source of great relief to those of us who have wondered endlessly where these poor girls were being sourced from.
Zahra’u, by her own admission, was to detonate her bomb at Kantin Kwari market in Kano, the same way her two accomplices did but she lost heart the moment she saw the disastrous result of what her friends had done and their dead bodies. She tried to escape but was eventually captured when she ‘confided’ her mission to a tricycle rider whose passenger she had become.
One can’t say why it took Zahra’u so long to talk, she was after all arrested on Wednesday last week, but her disclosure that she was taken to a Boko Haram camp by her own father was a great shock indeed.
According to the comments she made when being paraded by the police in Kano, Zahra’u was taken, along with other girls she didn’t know, by her father to a bush camp in Bauchi, where they were handed over to a so-called trainer.
In her own words, ‘At the bush they asked me if I wanted to go to paradise, I answered in the affirmative. They started narrating the conditions of going to paradise with emphasis on martyrdom. They said they wanted me to become a suicide bomber and that will make me enter paradise. I told them I didn’t want to be a suicide bomber. They threatened to kill me along with those they regarded as infidels.
After sometime I accepted the suicide bombing mission, I did that mainly because I wanted to move out of that jungle.’
 Zahra’us ‘confession’ raises more questions than answers. Number one is who is her father? And where did he get the other girls from? Where is this jungle in Bauchi state? Yes, there are enough leads in what this young lady said to the police that if we follow them, we might make some real breakthrough in the search for the masterminds of this terror in our midst. But are we ready to follow these leads?
When some months ago, we were told that the kingpin of the Chibok abduction had been caught, we all heaved a collective sigh of relief believing that those poor girls will make it home in no time. But up to now there is no news about their whereabouts. The kingpin is still in police or SSS custody but he had not been helpful in getting those girls released. It was either they did not follow the leads he provided or he was an innocent man who was unlucky enough to get caught by JTF operatives desperate to show their ‘effectiveness’ in combating terror. Either way we saw no positive result of capturing the Chibok kingpin.
Again when soldiers rescued some of the perpetrators of the Kano Central mosque carnage from angry mosque-goers  who had risen in self-defence and were able to kill three of them, we thought we will get to know everything about that utterly atrocious attack on innocent worshippers. But we are yet to hear anything from those gunmen. It was almost as if they were never arrested. And why should it be so?
If we are really a nation desperately seeking answers to this spate of killings and maiming, why should we treat lightly anything that will lead us to the source of it? As yet our authorities are trying hard to shield the people who tried to buy arms illegally from South Africa using almost 10 million dollars in cash. If we were a serious country, the identity and fate of the actual couriers of this unholy merchandise would have been known by now.
But because some ‘untouchables’ were involved, our government would rather shield them than dig into the source and motive for this arms purchase. In fact to show how little our government respects our intelligence, its officials claimed that the aborted cash-and-carry
arms purchase was an official government transaction. So far the two
Nigerians and an Israeli arrested in Johannesburg have remained
unnamed.
Then a few weeks ago, a weapons-laden Russian plane landed in Kano.
Despite the uproar that the plane, which only stopped for re-fuelling but attracted the diligent eyes of Aminu Kano International Airport officials, generated it was allowed to fly away without so much as unloading its dangerous contents. This, in a country that has seen so much blood-bath its citizens are desperate for clues on to how end it.
The possibility of foreigners being involved neck-deep in our so-called insurgency cannot be ignored at all. And we are not referring to the usual official refrain that Al-Qaida operatives are all over the world, helping bloodthirsty elements, we are talking about  munitions merchants and other contractors from advanced countries of the world, who are busy  making easy money on the blood innocent Nigerians.
Even Zahra’u had said that there were white people among their trainers. She must be drilled for more information so that enough will be known through her that could take our security operatives to the enemy. Probably knowing that she will soon be blowing herself up, these merchants of death might have been careless enough to let slip a few things that could lead to their forest hide-out.  But she herself must be given adequate security before some disgruntled trainer or even her own father, finds a way to silence her in order to save his skin.
Whatever leads she gives must be followed, if we are to reach the devils who deprive young women of their valuable lives and make them murderers, by brainwashing them with false promises of paradise.  This forest hideout must be stormed by our military in order to get at these evil geniuses. We must not treat it the way Sambisa was treated, like some impregnable fortress.
Indeed there are many who, being familiar with the terrain, claim that Sambisa is not even a dense forest. Yet our military refused to take the plunge and get to them until they themselves decided to come out and claim more territory. We must not allow this to happen with regards to the Bauchi forest. Our military must take clues from Zahra’u’s leads and get to these murderers. Let her team be the last supply of unwilling female bombers to be taken to that jungle.