Ibrahim Gaidam, Governor of Yobe state. Source: AP
SUSPECTED Boko Haram Islamists have killed 63 people in an attack on secondary school students as they slept, in the latest school massacre to hit Nigeria’s troubled northeast.
Details of the attack emerged yesterday as Nigeria issued an appeal to France and Abuja’s Francophone neighbours, especially Cameroon, to help it in the battle against Islamists, two days before a planned visit from French President Francois Hollande.
The raid at 2am (local time) on Tuesday targeted the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi in Yobe state and bore the hallmarks of a similar attack last year in which 40 died.
The attackers reportedly hurled explosives into student residential buildings, sprayed gunfire into rooms and hacked a number of students to death.
A senior medical source at the Sani Abacha Specialist Hospital in Yobe’s capital, Damaturu, said the gunmen targeted male students and females were “spared”.
“So far, 43 bodies have been brought (from the college) and are lying at the morgue,” said the source. A statement released by President Goodluck Jonathan’s office described the killing by people it called “deranged terrorists and fanatics”, as “callous and senseless”.
Yobe has been one of the hardest-hit areas in Boko Haram’s 4 1/2-year uprising. The name Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden”. The group has been blamed for waves of school attacks, especially in Yobe, where scores of students have been slaughtered in the past year.
The state’s police chief, Sanusi Rufai, who confirmed the attack and had given an earlier death toll of 29, went to Buni Yadi - about 60km from Damaturu - with Governor Ibrahim Geidam to assess the damage.
Yobe is one of three northeastern states placed under emergency rule in May last year when the military launched a massive operation to crush the Boko Haram uprising.
Boko Haram, declared a terrorist organisation by Nigeria and the US, has said it is fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north.
In a video sent to the media last week, Boko Haram’s purported leader, Abubakar Shekau, said he would continue his relentless campaign of violence on anyone who supported democracy or Western values.
Shekau, deemed a global terrorist by the US, also threatened to widen the insurgency outside the group’s northeastern stronghold with attacks in the oil-producing southern Niger Delta region. Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer and an Islamist attack in the country’s key economic region would pile further pressure on Mr Jonathan.
The country’s Information Minister warned the attacks could harm French and other Western interests in West Africa if left unchecked. “What we need is international co-operation from the French, from the French-speaking west-African countries to work together to deal with this problem before it becomes a major problem for France, for Western interests operating in west Africa,” Labaran Maku said. “It will devastate French interests if we allow this terror to go on.”
The comments came ahead of a planned visit by Mr Hollande on today and tomorrow to attend an international conference on security, peace and development in Africa and to celebrate the centenary of Nigerian unification.
Mr Maku said much of the problem stemmed from its border with Cameroon and called for “increased partnership” with its northern neighbour. Its participation in the international (military) joint task force policing the borders “has been a bit weak”, Mr Maku said. This had made the border a safe haven for insurgents.
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