The Takfiri Boko Haram militants have attacked a town in Nigeria’s northeastern state of Borno near the border with Cameroon, killing nearly a dozen people. The killings took place after hundreds of Boko Haram terrorists stormed the town of Gamboru, located some 700 kilometers (434 miles) north of the capital, Abuja, following the withdrawal of about 2,500 Chadian troops from the Nigerian territory last week. “Boko Haram gunmen returned on motorcycles to Gamboru yesterday (Wednesday)... and shot dead eight people,” Mudi Dankaka, a local of the nearby Cameroonian town of Fotokol, said. He added that three more people were killed on Thursday. Another Fotokol resident, Umar Ari, said Nigerian forces have not been spotted in Gamboru, leaving the area exposed and with no security presence since the Chadian troops’ pullback. Boko Haram Takfiris had earlier massacred dozens of women in Bama – a city of about 200,000 people located just 75 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of Borno state’s capital, Maiduguri.
Nigeria’s states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe have been the scene of six years of Boko Haram violence, which has claimed over 13,000 lives and displaced a further 1.5 million people since 2009. In May 2013, all the three states were put on a state of emergency while troops and civilian forces pushed the militants out of the urban centers into remote rural areas. In November 2014, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan tried to extend the state of emergency for a third time but the country’s parliament blocked the move. On 7 March, Abubakar Shekau – the leader of the feared Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, opened a new page in the history of the group when he announced his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed ‘caliph’ and leader of the Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS or ISIL). Al-Baghdadi’s acceptance of Shekau’s bay’ah, or pledge of allegiance, has formalised the alliance between two of the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisations. Boko Haram joins a growing number of extremist groups in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia that have since the beginning of 2014 voluntarily given up their independence by proclaiming the supreme authority of ISIS. Shekau, however, is known for his uncompromising views, raising questions as to how he would respond to orders from al-Baghdadi. The practice of giving bay’ah has become common among African terrorist groups and is often mistaken to be a sign of weakness or imminent demise. Many factors – including strategic, organisational, leadership and ideological reasons – may account for a group’s decision to pledge loyalty to another.
