Boko Haram expanding, it’s time to stop it – UN official

The Department of State Service (DSS) had on October 24 arrested and charged 45 suspected members of Boko Haram to a Magistrate Court over an alleged plot to attack Lagos.

The group has sought to carve out an emirate based on a severe interpretation of Islamic law in northeastern Nigeria and has also carried out numerous attacks across the border in neighbouring countries, including Niger.

An unspecified number of teenage girls were taken away early on Sunday in Bam village, located about 170km south of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, after razing buildings and killing at least seven people, an unnamed security officer said.

Witnesses said: “Boko Haram members” attacked villages armed with Kalashnikovs and threw explosives into people’s homes, AFP reported.

“If we consider the online report that Boko Haram has set out to wipe out Shi’ite in Nigeria as threat enough to stop us, then nobody will practice his/ her religion because these people attack churches, mosques, houses, motor parks and markets”, Daily Trust quoted him as saying.

Ali Mallam Ali, a local chief in the village, said most residents were still asleep when the incident occurred. “We used to have pockets of Boko Haram, it’s definitely expanding”, Najat Rochdi, UN resident coordinator in Cameroon said.

Displaced teachers across the region have volunteered to teach, and many children who fled violence in remote rural areas have gone to school for the first time, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.

Anas broke with the government’s stance on the fight against Boko Haram, warning that the deadline “may be unrealistic” and saying Nigerians should not regard December as a “sacrosanct date when all suicide bombings will end”. “We just help them deliver”, he told AFP by telephone from Maiduguri.

Instead, the group has increasingly favoured suicide and bomb attacks against civilians in towns and cities to secure maximum casualties and publicity.