We do not as yet know the name of the man who drove a Mercedes Benz V-Boot on Abuja’s streets early yesterday, attached himself to the convoy of Inspector General Hafiz Ringim as the police boss drove to work, attempted to con his way through the heavy security at the gates of the Force Headquarters and, when he was diverted to the visitors’ car park, detonated a car bomb that killed him, a policeman sitting by his side and scores of other people in the car park. In doing so he wrote his anonymous name into the history books: the first ever suicide bomber in Nigeria.


The Jama’atu ahlus-Sunnah lid da’awati wal Jihad, better known as Boko Haram, has already claimed responsibility for the shock event of yesterday, the most daring attack in Nigeria since the October 1, 2010 bombings near Eagle Square, Abuja during the ceremonies marking 50 years of this country’s independence.



It is not easy to verify the claim of responsibility by Boko Haram, since two different spokesmen spoke on its behalf yesterday and neither of them was available for a direct interview. Yet, the sect’s claim of responsibility for this bombing sounds plausible because only two days earlier, IGP Ringim was in Maiduguri, the sect’s nerve centre, and he boasted after receiving a donation of armoured personnel carriers and pickup trucks from the state government that the days of Boko Haram are numbered. Ringim said with the 2011 general elections over, the police can now concentrate full attention on the sect, which is accused of carrying out many murders and bomb blasts in Borno and Bauchi states in the past year. It is also suspected of being behind the bomb blasts at Mogadishu Barracks in Abuja late last year, and more recently at a mammy market in Bauchi and at a drinking joint at Madallah in Niger State.

On the day that the IG’s remarks were reported in the newspapers [Wednesday], the Boko Haram said in Maiduguri that it was no longer ready for dialogue with the authorities and that it would continue with its armed campaign. Yesterday’s attack at Force Headquarters came less than 24 hours after that threat was issued; it was carried out far outside the sect’s normal operational area; it was a much bigger bomb than the sect had ever used before, and it was the first case of the sect using a suicide bomber, since all its previous attacks were hit and runs.

Suicide bombing is a rarity worldwide. In the last 40 years of intense nationalist, revolutionary and religious struggles around the world, relatively few insurgent groups have resorted to suicide attacks. They include several Palestinian factions, notably the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Dr. George Habash, Black September of Abu Dawoud, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Other groups that have used suicide attacks include the Japanese Red Army, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam [Tamil Tigers], the Chechen nationalists led by Shamil Basayev, as well as Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir.

Other violent groups such as the Italian Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof gang of Germany, the Spanish Basque group ETA, the French terrorist group Action Direct, the Provisional Irish Republican Army [IRA] and the Shining Path guerrillas of Peru all stopped short of suicide attacks.

The joint military and police task force deployed in Borno State and other parts of the North East has had difficulty containing the Boko Haram’s hit and run tactics in the last two years. If the group were to resort more to suicide bombing, the task will become very difficult indeed. Which is why the repeated offer by the new Borno State governor Alhaji Kashim Shettima to negotiate with the sect needs to be encouraged by the federal authorities, in addition to other security measures they may deem it necessary to pursue.

Governor Shettima has repeated his offer to dialogue on at least three occasions. So far, the Boko Haram’s response to his offer has been less than encouraging, including a demand that the governor should resign and that the 1999 Constitution should be replaced with the Shari’a, a matter well beyond the governor’s power. Matters are further complicated because the sect appears to have split into factions; according to the Borno State government, at least one of the factions is affiliated to its political opponents and is acting at their behest.

Whatever the complications, it is important to engage the sect in a dialogue and to see how a meeting point could be found to end this carnage. The Boko Haram leaders have also expressed their regret that innocent persons are being hurt by its campaign; hopefully they will learn from the historical experience of many insurgent groups in Europe, Africa, Arabia, Asia and Latin America that ultimately, a violent campaign such as this one cannot be sustained forever and an accommodation has to be found at some point. All Nigerians pray that this is done sooner rather than later.


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