Why Boko Haram attacks ‘are increasing’

— Maiduguri death toll hits 51

President Goodluck Jonathan has not implemented even one of the recommendations in the report of the Committee for Dialogue and Peace which had parleyed with Boko Haram leadership.

Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, who was a member of the committee,   made this known over the weekend on Liberty Radio’s Guest of the Week programme in Kaduna at the weekend.

Speaking against the backdrop of the renewed violence in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, Baba-Ahmed said that the committee’s report has been dumped in spite of the huge amount of work that they did, the risk that members took and the excellent report that they submitted.

“For instance, we recommended that the president should set up a standing committee on continuous dialogue. We said don’t allow the momentum we gathered to be lost,” he said, adding that close to one year after, “there is nothing on the ground.”

According to him, the committee had engaged the leadership of Boko Haram in dialogue “and we established very strong foundation for resolving this problem.”
Baba Ahmed said they advised Jonathan to set up another standing committee in order to build on the confidence that the Dialogue Committee had earned from the insurgents.

Up till now, this committee has not been set up, he pointed out, adding that Boko Haram has recreated itself.
At first, there were a lot of cynicism and doubt on the part of the insurgents because they didn’t trust the committee at the beginning, Baba-Ahmed said. Eventually, the committee earned the trust of the insurgents “and we negotiated some of their demands,” he added.

Baba-Ahmed, who is also the Interim Chairman of APC in Kaduna state, regretted that Boko Haram has defied the military because they lack strong political will coupled with the military’s operational problems.
According to him, “It is a very sad commentary on our military that today Boko Haram is still wrecking havoc on Nigerians.”

Meanwhile, as families continued to mourn their relatives, the death toll in Saturday’s bomb attacks on Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, has risen to 51, Red Cross officials have said.
Twin-car bomb blasts had rocked a bustling marketplace in a pickup van carrying firewood, with residents believing that the bombs were planted by suspected Boko Haram sect.

Many more people were believed to be buried in rubble from the Saturday night explosions that collapsed some buildings and set others aflame with smoke billowing for hours, said the official, who requested anonymity.
The victims included children who were dancing at a wedding celebration and people who were watching a soccer match on an outdoor TV screen.

Fifty corpses were retrieved, Hassan Ali, the leader of an anti-terror vigilante group, popularly referred to as civilian JTF, said.
The first blast came from a passenger car and did not kill many people, said Ali. Most of those killed had run to the scene to help when a second explosion blasted from a pickup truck carrying firewood, he said.
Survivors said they captured a man who jumped out of the first car, grabbed a tricycle taxi and tried to make off. He was badly beaten and taken to nearby Umaru Shehu General Hospital, where a security guard said all the wounded brought in had died.