We’ll stop killings if soldiers are withdrawn —Boko Haram

The Boko Haram fundamentalist sect has said it will stop killings in parts of Borno State if soldiers are withdrawn from the streets and the group’s mosque is returned to its members.

The sect’s leader, Abu Suleiman, who listed the conditions on the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation monitored in Kaduna on Monday, said its members had serious religious attachment to their original mosque in the capital of Borno State, Maiduguri.

Suleiman spoke against the background of an earlier statement by another member of the group that the killings would stop if Governor Ali Modu Sheriff was removed from office. The sect has been blamed for the killing of over 1000 persons since July 2010.

But Suleiman said the sect would stop the killings if the authorities allow its members to return and continue with their religious activities at the mosque. The Boko Haram leader accused soldiers and other security agents operating in Maiduguri of bias and called for their immediate withdrawal.

Suleiman insisted that members of the sect would not perform their worship and other religious activities in mosques belonging to other Islamic groups because it was not proper. He said the group’s members believed that many other Islamic clerics were ‘not intellectually capable and knowledgeable enough’ in the Islamic religion to lead them.

“We want our mosque to be given back to us; we also want all the soldiers in Maiduguri to be withdrawn immediately,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the Borno State Police Command on Sunday set up road blocks on major roads in Maiduguri in its bid to check the increasing attacks by suspected Boko Haram militants.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that at each checkpoint, passengers were requested to disembark for a thorough search. NAN reports that the police also ordered motorcyclists to disembark and raise one of their hands, while pushing their bikes with the other hand.

Some residents, however, criticised the new approach, describing it as ‘inhuman.’ A member of the Borno branch of the Nigeria Bar Association Committee on Human Rights, Mallam Kaka Shehu, told NAN in Maiduguri that the method was oppressive.

He alleged that two NBA members were assaulted by security agents on Sunday for refusing to frog-jump at a checkpoint.

But the spokesman of the state police command, Malam Lawal Abdullahi, explained that the search was aimed at confiscating weapons in the hands of the militants and called for understanding from the people.

In a related development, the Nigerian Governors’ Forum has commiserated with the government and people of the state over the recent killings in Maiduguri.

The governors said in a letter delivered to Sheriff on Sunday by the NGF Chairman, Dr. Bukola Saraki, that they “condemn in absolute terms this mindless and unconscionable behaviour and call for heightened awareness and professionalism by our security agencies. There is no accommodation for this kind of recklessness.”

-Punch

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Posted by admin on Feb 7 2011. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry