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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Nigeria: Govt Orders Military Chiefs to Relocate to Troubled Northeast |
| 2017-07-30 |
| [All Africa] Nigeria has ordered its military chiefs to relocate to Maiduguri in the northeast following a bushwhack on an oil exploration team in which more than 50 people were killed by Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... earlier this week. Tuesday's attack in the Magumeri area of Borno state on a ten-vehicle convoy of specialists from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation was the Islamist krazed killers' deadliest in months. A rescue was attempted by military personnel and vigilantes - many of whom were killed. The army said on Wednesday that 10 people were killed in the attack. But a source involved in dealing with the aftermath told AFP on Thursday: "The corpse count keeps mounting. Now we have more than 50... and more bodies are coming in. "It's clear that the attack wasn't for abduction. They (Boko Haram) attacked just to kill." Kidnapped oil workers speak on Boko Haram video [AlAhram] Boko Haram Islamists have published a video showing three kidnapped members of an oil exploration team, after an ambush in northeast Nigeria ... a particularly crimson stretch of Islam's bloody border... earlier this week that killed at least 50. In the four-minute video, the trio identify themselves as being from the University of Maiduguri and call on the government to meet the jihadists' demands in exchange for their safe return. The men were part of a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) team on a mission to find commercial quantities of oil in the Lake Chad basin when they came under attack on Tuesday. "I want to call on the acting president professor Yemi Osinbajo to come to our rescue to meet the demand," one of the men says in the video, which he said was shot on Friday. He attributed the attack to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... -supported Boko Haram faction headed by Abu Mus'ab al-Barnawi, which has promised to hit military and government targets. There was no indication of where the video was shot but the convoy came under attack near Magumeri, some 50 kilometres (31 miles) by road northwest of Maiduguri. Most of the victims were soldiers and civilian militia members providing security. Five members of staff from the university -- two lecturers, two technologists and a driver -- were also killed, vice-chancellor Ibrahim Njodi said on Friday. University of Maiduguri front man Danjuma Gambo confirmed the identities of the three kidnapped men in the video. "They are our staff but one more is yet to be accounted for," he told AFP. "It's a confirmation of the boldness and reassurance that Boko Haram has managed to gain over the last six weeks," Yan St-Pierre, from the Modern Security Consulting Group in Berlin, told AFP. "They have been attacking more and more military outposts and more military convoys. For them to go after NNPC personnel just shows they don't fear any military reprisal. "Basically they have managed to gain enough resources, enough material, to plan ambushes targeted towards high value targets." The al-Barnawi faction differs from fighters loyal to Boko Haram's long-time leader Abubakar Shekau ... the lunatic leader of Boko Haram who has been reported dead at least eleven times, pledged his body and soul to ISIS, told his fighters to hang it up once or twice, and been fired by the Caliph and refused to step down ... in that it disagrees with the indiscriminate targeting of civilians in suicide and kabooms. Nigeria is searching for oil in the northeast to try to reduce its reliance on supplies from the Niger delta, where Lion of Islam attacks have slashed production and deepened the country's worst recession in decades. The military gave the NNPC the green light to continue exploration in November 2016, according to Nigeria's junior oil minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu. The University of Maiduguri's vice-chancellor told news hounds on Friday the university had been hesitant to send staff with the NNPC team but had been assured about security. |
| Posted by:Fred |