Nearly seven months after terror was first unleashed on the people of the north eastern town of Chibok Borno state, the town has finally fallen in to the hands of the Islamic extremist sect Boko Haram.
Boko Haram forcefully took control of the town where it had earlier stolen more than 200 schoolgirls from their school on Thursday evening, in very dramatic circumstances looking very much like a scene from a Hollywood movie.
“The insurgents rode into town shooting from pickup trucks and motorcycles and quickly took control around 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon,” Bana Lawan, chairman of the Chibok local government, told The Associated Press.
Words of the fallen city did not spread quickly because most of the telephone network infrastructure in the area have been either destroyed by the insurgents or jammed y the military.
The insurgent’s capture of Chibok is coming nearly three weeks after what is now widely described as a “fake ceasefire” was declared on 17th October by the Nigerian military. The military had claimed that it was in talks with the leadership of Boko Haram, and that the talk was yielding good fruits. They had revealed then, that the peace talks had been mediated by the president of neigbouring Chad Republic. But Boko Haram had swiftly confirmed its non-shifting determination to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria by quickly staging several attacks, which claimed lots of lives, and capturing several more cities while the Nigerian military downed its weapons in respect of the “fake cease fire”. The group’s face, Abubakar Shekau had later come out on a video, as typical of the group, to deny brokering any such ceasefire with Nigeria.
People trapped in the Boko-Haram-captured-cites have reported that have been subjected to a strict version of the Shariah law and have witnessed public amputation of the hands of alleged offenders and whipping of people for “sins” such as smoking cigarettes.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has repeatedly promised to fight the insurgency to a finish and rescue the schoolgirls. In fact, such promises were key in his speech on Tuesday when he launched his bid for a second term in office ahead of the 2015 General Elections.
At a meeting held in July with Jonathan, Chibok community leaders stressed that aside from the trauma of the mass kidnapping, residents of the town remained in daily fear of attack and pleaded for more security.
Ayuba Chibok, whose niece is among the hostages, said at the time that people told the head of state that they “were tired of sleeping in the bushes”.
AFP reported that elders of Chibok had earlier confirmed in a series of phone calls in recent months that security had deteriorated, despite the promises made at the meeting.
A senior rescue worker warned late last month that Chibok’s fall was imminent, the news agency reported.
Pogo Bitrus, chairman of the elders’ forum in Chibok, confirmed the attack to AFP but said Boko Haram may have had inside information about security in the town.
The vigilantes’ leader had left for Maiduguri to procure new cartridges for his men’s shotguns after supplies ran low, he said.
“He was due to come today, so it looks like they knew what was happening,” he said by telephone from Abuja, adding that there was no word on casualties.
“Chibok is now a ghost town with only Boko Haram in control.”
But Bitrus told the news agency that the vigilantes were preparing for a counter-attack and troops had been deployed from Damboa, 36.5 kilometres away by road to the northwest.
