Politics

It has been two days since the jihadist sect Boko Haram released a video that showed as many as 50 of the missing Chibok schoolgirls still alive, and the Nigerian government has yet to reach out to the family of the girl who was singled out in the video.

The lack of contact has again left the families of the Chibok girls feeling neglected.

"No one from the Nigerian government has contacted us. Maybe it's because we are poor or because we don't have oil in Chibok. We are nobody. But I am glad to know that God has answered my prayers by keeping her alive," said Esther Yakubu, whose daughter appeared in the video. "The message I have for the federal government is to release the [jailed] fighters so that the [other] fighters will release the girls.”

In the latest Boko Haram video, Yakubu's daughter Dorcas Maida Yakubu spoke in her native language.

"We are suffering here. There is no kind of suffering we haven't seen," Dorcas Maida Yakubu says in the recording. "Tell the government to give them [Boko Haram] their people so we can also come home to be with you. ... There is nothing you, or we, can do about this, but to get their people back to them, so we can go home."

Dorcas Maida Yakubu also says many of her fellow abductees have been injured and hurt. Some have been killed by Nigerian airstrikes, which the Nigerian military said was unlikely.

The captive was 15 years old when Boko Haram abducted her and nearly 300 of her classmates from their school in the town of Chibok in northeastern Nigeria in April 2014.

Possibility of negotiations

Boko Haram's latest video has sparked a fierce debate within Nigeria about the possibility of negotiations between the federal government and the jihadist sect. Last year, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said he was open to talking to a credible Boko Haram leader.

That is a struggle for the group.

Ever since the 2009 extrajudicial killing of its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, the sect has been fractured, with splinter groups emerging and disappearing from the public eye.

Earlier this month, a leadership crisis erupted when the Islamic State announced Mohammed Yusuf's spiritual son, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, as the "governor" of the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP), otherwise known as Boko Haram.

The announcement implied that Abubakar Shekau, who has led the group since the death of the founder, had been replaced.

The group is now split into factions, with both al-Barnawi and Shekau vying for supremacy and denouncing one another in recent audio broadcasts.

The Nigerian federal government said it has reached out to the group. But the divisions threaten possible negotiations.

Failed talks

In the past, talks with the sect have fallen through over lack of credible liaisons. The Nigerian government said it is being cautious.

But some say that the latest video is a publicity stunt by Shekau, who appears desperate. An ongoing military offensive by troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon has forced Boko Haram to flee from many areas it once controlled.

Muslims Rights Concern, a Nigeria group that protects the rights of Muslims, says, "Boko Haram released the video because its logistics are in shambles. It is surrounded on all sides. Its supplies are cut off. The game is up. Boko Haram should surrender instead of trying to hoodwink Nigerians."

Counterterrorism policy analyst Yan St-Pierre says Shekau's message is intended to go beyond his own followers and his rival, al-Barnawi. It may be aimed directly at the central power, the Islamic State.

"It's actually speaking to [IS leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi and anyone else who is in the high rank of ISIS officials to show them, ‘Look, choosing Abu Musab al-Barnawi is a mistake. I'm actually the one in the charge. I'm the one that provided results for this organization. I'm the one who still has control. I'm the one who is still pulling the strings,' " said St-Pierre, using another acronym for the militant group.

The Bring Back Our Girls group, which has spearheaded the campaign to pressure the Nigerian government to find and rescue the missing Chibok girls, says it is not opposed to negotiations. The members plan to march to the presidential office in the next few days to re-engage with Buhari.

Repeated requests

Boko Haram has repeatedly used the Chibok girls as a bargaining chip, demanding the federal government release detained Boko Haram members in exchange for the girls. But there are also hundreds of other, lesser-known hostages being held by the group.

"Will they also be used as bargaining chips?" St-Pierre asked. "By negotiating with Boko Haram, by giving into its demands, it would most likely set a precedent that would not end up well.

"At this point in time, especially if you look at the larger picture, it's not to the advantage of the Nigerian government to free the girls via negotiations, especially if you consider all that PR [public relations] rhetoric about being on their way to defeating Boko Haram, and Boko Haram being kicked out. It would be acknowledging the fact that they are unable to complete the job," he added.

Boko Haram has killed at least 20,000 people in its seven-year uprising against the Nigerian government. It surpassed IS in 2014 to become the world's deadliest terrorist group, according to the 2015 Global Terrorism Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Esther Yakubu knows how dangerous the group is, but she says negotiating with them is a high price that must be paid as soon as possible. After the mass abduction, she fled her home in Chibok. More than 2 million people have been displaced because of Boko Haram attacks.

Her family now rents a two-bedroom home in Abuja, where every night the family gathers to pray for Dorcas Maida to return.

"I just want my sister back," says 15-year-old Happy.

Esther Yakubu ends the night the way she often does, opening her Bible and looking at the photos left between the pages — two pictures of her smiling daughter captured just days before she was kidnapped.

Staring at the photo, tears gather in her eyes and fall down her cheeks.

"We are with you in spirit, even though you are not physically here with us," she says.

VOA

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Rita Akana

17.Aug.2016

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Last Sunday, 14 August, 2016, marked the eighth year following Cameroon’s take-over of the hitherto disputed Bakassi Peninsula. Cameroon, however, regained full citizen and tax control of the Peninsula last 9 October following an agreement that any inhabitant of the area must either declare for Nigeria and pay resident permit or declare for Cameroon and obtain the National Identity card.

Within the eight years of Bakassi-back-home, the Cameroonian government has been very much in the news for investing social, economic, and political interest in the oil and fish rich peninsula. The investments are reported to cost billions of FCFA to sustain local governments or Councils (six in number), provide potable water, erect schools (primary, secondary and high), install agricultural offices, establish Police stations and maintain the Defence Forces on the field.

The most recent investment was noted when PAMOL Plantations opened an area in Bakassi early 2016 to resettle farmers of oil palms and also repopulate the land. Before then, the Military Engineering Corps had invested some FCFA 640 million for 60 fishermen homes and CFA 300 Million for telecommunications pylons. An on-the-spot appraisal of the projects showed the pylons were 50 percent finished last May. Meanwhile the fishermen village of 60 homes was completed at New Beach and awaiting a final works report by the Military Engineering Corps as the executing agency. This would lead to an official reception by MINEPIA. The Military Engineering Corps led by Colonel Jackson Kamgain, MINEPIA led by Oumarou Ousmanou and MINATD headed by Ndian Senior Divisional Officer, Ntou’ou Ndong Chamberlin, accompanied by experts were on the field on 30 April this year to inspect the work.

The two earmarked villages for fishermen are the New Beach-Isangele and Mbemong. At New Beach-Isangele a 5-hectare land surface has been invested to host 60 homes each on 53 square metres (56 in blocks and 4 in wooden material), all electrified with solar energy, 64 toilets in eight structures, and a borehole with a water reservoir functioning with solar energy. Each of the homes has two bedrooms and a veranda. A six-kilometre access road linking the village to Isangele headquarters was also created by the “Genie Militaire”.
According to Mr. Oumarou Ousmanou of MINEPIA, the last thing to be done is for Government to install security posts in the fishermen village and everything shall be ready.

Cameroon Tribune

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Rita Akana

17.Aug.2016

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Cameroon has been arresting or dismissing members of local self-defense militia in the country's north amid fears that Boko Haram may be trying to turn some of them against their communities.

Local authorities told VOA the crackdown follows an investigation by security agencies.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of the Far North region, expressed concern that Boko Haram militants may be trying to infiltrate Cameroon via the local self-defense groups.

Authorities are screening the groups, Bakari said.

He added that authorities are organizing self-defense groups so, going forward, they'll coordinate with security forces and denounce suspects.

Crackdown in border villages

Bakari did not say how many of the vigilante group members had been arrested. But local newspapers report that at least 70 have been picked up by the police in a dozen border villages and that the crackdown is still on going.

Authorities did not offer any examples of this alleged cooperation between self-defense group members and Boko Haram and whether it has contributed to any specific attacks.

Last month, Amnesty International accused Cameroon of arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses against suspected Boko Haram supporters. Amnesty said more than 100 people have been sentenced to death since July 2015 in trials it described as "deeply unfair."

The government slammed the Amnesty report as biased.

Abdoul Garba, who leads a self-defense group in Kolofata on Cameroon's northern border with Nigeria, says the insurgents promise better conditions and deceive some vigilantes to work as spies.

Call for better working conditions

Garba said the government should give the self-defense groups food and material to boost their morale. That would improve working conditions and spur volunteers to work as the government expected, he added.

Self-defense groups say they've helped the military by patrolling villages and hard-to-reach border areas, but say they need more training for the hard, dangerous work.

Inoussa Hama, a member of a Kolofata self-defense group, said some of his men had been kidnapped and killed. He said they need special instruction to handle overnight shifts from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Cameroon authorities said they've reduced the terrorists’ ability to organize large-scale attacks but that the terrorists are trying to replenish their ranks by recruiting vulnerable youths in Cameroon.

VOA

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Rita Akana

16.Aug.2016

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When President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn into office on 29 May last year, many people believed change had finally come. Mr. Buhari pulled ahead of Mr. Goodluck Jonathan with close to three million votes. He won 21 states while President Jonathan defeated him in 15 states as well as the Federal capital territory Abuja.

It was the first time that an opposition party candidate had defeated a sitting Nigerian President since democracy returned in 1999.

During the campaign, Mr. Buhari and his All Progressives Congress, APC, promised to create millions of jobs, end corruption, defeat Boko Haram, free the Chibok girls and give a new direction to a country that had been despised in the comity of nations.

But in his second year in office, many find it hard to say in a concrete way what he has achieved. While some progress has been made in the fight against Boko Haram, Mr. Buhari declared during his inaugural speech in Abuja that the war against the terrorists would not be said to have been won if the Chibok girls, who were kidnapped in their school in April 2014, were not released.Mr. Buhari and the APC lambasted Mr. Jonathan when the kidnapping took place and repeatedly said his failure to rescue them should send him out of office and propel them to power to do what he could not do.

But since Mr. Buhari took over power, the economy has virtually collapsed, with the naira now one of the worst currencies on the continent. Thousands of people have been sacked as the purchasing power of ordinary Nigerians continued to crash. Companies have closed shop and the jobs Mr. Buhari promised are nowhere to be seen.

Worse, electricity has crashed to its lowest level in many decades and with high oil fuel prices at the pump, many businessmen find it hard to afford the product to power their electricity generating sets.

Mr. Buhari has continually blamed the administration of Mr. Jonathan for massive looting and corruption and has said he found an empty treasury and a deluge of problems.

While many Nigerians understand his lamentations, millions of people are getting tired of excuses in his second year in office.

Mr. Buhari’s party members have been engaged in internal wrangling from the Senate to the House of representatives and the APC does not even have a Board of Trustees Chairman as at now.

It seems to many Nigerians that it is not about the people but about who gets what, about their personal interests.

It also seems that Mr. Buhari does not have a clear economic roadmap and decisions sometimes are not well thought before implementing them. The decision to sponsor pilgrims when the country is broke has also left many people wondering whether his priorities were upside down or not.

With low oil prices at the international market and his failure to solve the agitation in the Niger Delta that has crumbled oil production by at least 700, 000 barrels of oil a day, things have been made things worse for Nigerians.

Many people now believe that things have never been this bad since independence from the United Kingdom in 1960.

Excuses by Mr. Buhari are beginning to annoy many. The President should realise that he is in charge and should solve problems Nigerians sent him from his Daura farm to the country’s seat of power in Abuja to resolve.

Failure to do that will make him a failure just like Mr. Jonathan who also did not fix electricity, or our refineries or our dead factories.

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Simon Ateba

16.Aug.2016

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The father of one of the Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped from the remote area of Chibok more than two years ago said he recognised his daughter in a video released by Boko Haram on Sunday.

A spokesman for the Bring Back Our Girls movement, set up to demand the return of 276 schoolgirls kidnapped in April 2014, said he was "certain" of the identities of 10 other girls seen in the footage.

"When I heard her voice, I realised she is my daughter," Kanu Yakubu told reporters in Abuja. 

He was referring to Maida Yakubu, whom he identifies as the girl seen in the video choking back her tears as she describes an air strike by the Nigerian armed forces.

The girl speaks in the Chibok dialect.

Bring Back Our Girls spokesman Abubakar Abdullahi earlier on Sunday said at least one of the girls had been recognised by a member of the movement.

The number of girls identified from the video has now risen significantly, he said.

"We're certain that these are the Chibok girls," Abdullahi told AFP.

"We recognise up to 10 from the video," Abdullahi said, adding that he is waiting for confirmation from the Nigerian government and parents of the girls before releasing any more names.

The video shows a masked man holding an assault rifle and dressed in military clothing.

In the background, several girls wearing Islamic clothing look visibly distressed and dab their eyes. One is holding a small baby.

AFP

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Rita Akana

15.Aug.2016

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 Some 13 now former hostages kidnapped by Central African rebels in the East region last March 19, 2015 have been received by Prime Minister Philemon Yang. The PM conveyed the message of the head of state to the former captives led by the Mayor of Lagdo, MAMA Abakai. They were received by Philemon yang, flanked by his close aides, including Communication minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary.

The event has been described as neglect on the part of Paul Biya, observers hold that Mr Biya is interested in receiving only ex foreign hostages at the unity palace. Because president Biya has received more than one ex foreign hostage at the Unity Palace, including the Catholic Priest and the Mounier family, many were of the opinion that the MAMA led ex hostages would also be received by Head of State.

The now former hostages were kidnapped and tortured for 15 months, they revealed that they were blindfolded for ten months, chained every day, their destination changed 12 times and were given just one litre of water for two persons per day. It has not been disclosed if the Cameroon government paid ransom o secure their release.

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Prince Nfor Hanson

14.Aug.2016

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