Boko Haram may have changed tactics in a bid to shield its bomb factories from the prying eyes of securitymen. The sect has resorted to using mosques and churches as a decoy to manufacture Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
This is even as police in Kaduna State yesterday recovered some bombs and weapons during a raid on a terrorists’ hide-out at Rafin-Guza, a suburb in the metropolis, barely 17 hours after brave youths arrested gun-totting Boko Haram members.
The development followed the discovery on Sunday by the Kogi State police command of a bomb factory at Okaito area of Okene in a building which bore a signpost of a church with a giant size Bible and the photograph of Jesus Christ pasted on the wall.
The Commissioner of Police,Alhaji Mohammed Musa Katsina, who disclosed this while parading a suspected bomb manufacturer, said the discovery was made possible after interrogation of the suspect arrested in connection with the failed bombing attempt of the Winners’ Chapel on Sunday morning.
Katsina explained that on Sunday at about 10.30 am, the vigilant police guard at the church in Okene sighted two young men in a Rover salon car marked Kogi LKJ 919 AA being driven around the church premises, but they could not gain access due to the tight security arrangement on ground.
Sensing that they might not be able to hit their target , he said the driver moved some metres away in a bid to offload the IEDs, stressing that in the process, one of the explosives was detonated. He stated that his men overpowered one of them and arrested a suspect, while the other fled into the bush.
He noted that through the co-operation of the expanded strategic network, the police later got intelligence report on the factory where explosives were being manufactured in the area. The police commissioner said that with the help of a joint operation with the Army, the factory was located.
But Mr. Katsina said, to the dismay of the patrol team, the four-bedroom flat which turned out to be the bombs’ factory, was also used as church and mosque respectively to deceive the public. He noted that one of the buildings was decorated like a church with the Bibles and the photograph of Jesus, while another was used for a mosque with mats and Moslem rosary adorning the place.. The police boss said that there was a large inscription of biblical quotation: “No weapon fashioned against me shall prosper,” inscribed on the wall to deceive the people living around the vicinity.
He said that police are investigating to ascertain those behind the factory, warning that all culprits will be brought to book no matter how highly placed. The items recovered are 46 IEDs, 15 capacitors, 15 fuses, three bottles of potassium chloride, five litres of acid, one electric detonator and a roll of firing cables.
Others are 250m detonating cord, three remote-controlled siren, 25kg of ammonium nitrate, three GSM sets, box of nails, 54 amunuition of 56 caliber, one motorcycle and other house items. He later paraded one of the suspects .The discovery of this bomb factory now makes five in Kogi State with one in Kabba and the three in the central axis of the state.
In Kaduna, the state police command said it has arrested 27 terror suspects within the last two months. Police Commissioner, Muhammed Jinjiri Abubakar, while briefing newsmen in his office yesterday, said in its continued clampdown on criminal elements, the command yesterday raided a terrorists’ hideout.
He said, “a confessed terrorist led detectives at about 0200hrs (2am) on Monday from our anti-robbery squad to Rafin-Guza area, where a hideout was raided and exhibits like cans of explosives, a bomb making powder, four khaki uniforms, two bags of chemicals used in making bombs, two masks, one AK-47 magazine with 27 rounds of live ammunition, among others, were recovered from the criminals”.
The commissioner, however, did not disclose the name of the suspect, who led the policemen to their hideout at Rafin-Guza, saying, investigations were still ongoing. Abubakar, who also gave the names of the suspected terrorists that invaded Mahuta as; Nura Abubakar and Mohammed Kabir, said the police would continue raiding criminals. He said that the two suspects and the two AK47 rifles, three magazines, ammunition and some IEDs recovered from them were all in the Army’s custody.
According to him, the police have arrested 27 suspected terrorists within the last two months in Rigasa area of the city, while 147 were apprehended during the recent Kaduna crisis. Assistant Public Relations Officer, 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman, confirmed to Daily Sun that the two suspects arrested on Sunday were in Army’s custody.
Usman said investigations were still ongoing and that the Army may soon release the suspects to a sister agency for further investigation. He, however, said soldiers assisted the Mahuta youths in the arrest of the suspects on Sunday by shooting at them.
This is even as he denied an allegation by some members of the community that soldiers prevented the youths from going after the fleeing suspect, saying the soldiers only took over the search for the suspect at large, in consideration of the safety of the brave youths.
However, Daily Sun gathered that, members of the community who were shot by the suspected terrorists were responding to treatment, as two of the seven people rushed to the hospital have already been discharged as at Press time.
Meanwhile, the Comptroller-General of Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Mrs. Rose Uzoma, yesterday denied reports that foreigners are behind Boko Haram. Addressing the House of Representatives’ joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) and Navy, yesterday in Abuja, Uzoma said it was wrong to conclude that the violent campaigns of the sect were fuelled by foreigners.
She said: “I’m not aware as of today, if any case of foreigner entering this country through the seaports that have been proved to be sympathetic to Boko Haram. “Let me use this opportunity please to say this fact, it has become commonplace that whenever there is an attack, it is usually assumed that the people involved are foreigners. “The Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) is the only security agency statutorily empowered to make public pronouncements on personality of persons,” he said.
“When people see dead bodies on the ground, they say they are illegal immigrants, any attack is attributed to illegal immigrants. I will like to inform that we have come across on a very few cases of involvement of nationals of neighbouring countries in these incidents,” she added.
The NIS boss recalled the story of 68 Chadians arrested in the wake of bomb attacks in Kano, saying investigation by her agency confirmed none of them was Chadian.
“There was no single Chadian amongst them rather we came across one Malian and a Ghanaian. Those two ECOWAS nationals did not have anything whatsoever to do with the bomb attack.
