With the unleashing of an arsenal of female suicide bombers on Kano last
week, the general public has been thrown into fear about its safety, more than
ever before – since the beginning of the Boko Haram insurgency five years ago.
More worrisome, is the evidence from the successful attacks in Kano that the group has mastered the technology of “miniaturizing” the explosives, such that they could be concealed under clothing. “This was not the case with previous suicide attacks in the country, where bomb-laden vehicles are driven into targets by suicide bombers,” an expert said.
“Another danger that is evident in this type of attack is the indiscriminate use of the female suicide bombers preponderantly against unsuspecting civilian targets. A lady does not elicit suspicion naturally as an average man would do. So by using young girls, they are further relaxing the alertness barriers in people, so that when these bomb-carriers melt into crowd, they are least expected to be the source of any threat. It is an innocent way of delivering a lethal weapon,” the expert added.
The security expert blamed Nigeria’s “inability” to clinically investigate the first female suicide attack in the North-East, which, he said, would have helped nip the use of female suicide bombers in the bud.
Already, the renewed attacks in Kano have rekindled issues around the abduction of Chibok girls, with many Nigerians coming to the conclusion that the sect was indoctrinating the captives and deploying them for suicide missions.
A senior military officer who is working with security teams on the activities of Boko Haram, told the Sunday Trust that the rumours may, in fact, have an iota of truth, saying even if the teenage attackers were not among the abducted Chibok girls, they could be other girls that the sect had kidnapped earlier in Yobe or other parts of the North-East.
The military officer said the girls could be coerced into carrying the bombs on their bodies after being threatened with death or other punishments like “threat of abduction of their family members.
Investigations have shown that some of the group’s fighters are sent for attacks under duress, as the punishment for refusing to obey is death. They have seen how their fellows who attempted to escape were slaughtered,” he said.
Another theory that security agents have come up with is the possibility of the girls being controlled through diabolical means to carryout the attack. “It is also not impossible for them to use certain means to control the minds of the girls and order them to carry out certain actions which ordinarily they would not do,” he explained.
There is also the tendency that they were deceived or lied to, he pointed out, explaining that, “a girl who has been kidnapped for months will naturally be home sick, so when she is strapped with a bag containing explosives and told to go to the police to take her home, she may blindly believe, thinking she is carrying her personal effect.
“It could be that she was asked to join a queue and buy something. She may not know what she was carrying and she may not be the one to detonate it, as the person who pulls the trigger is always nearby.
“We have seen what happened during the suicide bombing of Pakistan’s naval base. The man who was carrying the explosives tried to send people away from himself before it went up. Apparently, he was forced to do it,” he said.
Equally, the officer held that some of the girls would have been convinced to execute the mission, especially if they are dependants of dead sect members. “It is possible to brainwash them about avenging the death of their fathers or brothers. They are deaths that are emotional and can make the bereaved susceptible to being pushed to take revenge, especially when such killings are shown to them to have been done unjustly by state actors,” the officer explained.
As the nation and its security agents are engrossed in search for answers and solutions to the new and deadly prowl of female suicide bombers, security experts said the only headway that has been achieved, was the arrest in Funtua of three suspects. “They would help us understand who the girls are, where they are kept and who trained them,” a security officer explained.
More worrisome, is the evidence from the successful attacks in Kano that the group has mastered the technology of “miniaturizing” the explosives, such that they could be concealed under clothing. “This was not the case with previous suicide attacks in the country, where bomb-laden vehicles are driven into targets by suicide bombers,” an expert said.
“Another danger that is evident in this type of attack is the indiscriminate use of the female suicide bombers preponderantly against unsuspecting civilian targets. A lady does not elicit suspicion naturally as an average man would do. So by using young girls, they are further relaxing the alertness barriers in people, so that when these bomb-carriers melt into crowd, they are least expected to be the source of any threat. It is an innocent way of delivering a lethal weapon,” the expert added.
The security expert blamed Nigeria’s “inability” to clinically investigate the first female suicide attack in the North-East, which, he said, would have helped nip the use of female suicide bombers in the bud.
Already, the renewed attacks in Kano have rekindled issues around the abduction of Chibok girls, with many Nigerians coming to the conclusion that the sect was indoctrinating the captives and deploying them for suicide missions.
A senior military officer who is working with security teams on the activities of Boko Haram, told the Sunday Trust that the rumours may, in fact, have an iota of truth, saying even if the teenage attackers were not among the abducted Chibok girls, they could be other girls that the sect had kidnapped earlier in Yobe or other parts of the North-East.
The military officer said the girls could be coerced into carrying the bombs on their bodies after being threatened with death or other punishments like “threat of abduction of their family members.
Investigations have shown that some of the group’s fighters are sent for attacks under duress, as the punishment for refusing to obey is death. They have seen how their fellows who attempted to escape were slaughtered,” he said.
Another theory that security agents have come up with is the possibility of the girls being controlled through diabolical means to carryout the attack. “It is also not impossible for them to use certain means to control the minds of the girls and order them to carry out certain actions which ordinarily they would not do,” he explained.
There is also the tendency that they were deceived or lied to, he pointed out, explaining that, “a girl who has been kidnapped for months will naturally be home sick, so when she is strapped with a bag containing explosives and told to go to the police to take her home, she may blindly believe, thinking she is carrying her personal effect.
“It could be that she was asked to join a queue and buy something. She may not know what she was carrying and she may not be the one to detonate it, as the person who pulls the trigger is always nearby.
“We have seen what happened during the suicide bombing of Pakistan’s naval base. The man who was carrying the explosives tried to send people away from himself before it went up. Apparently, he was forced to do it,” he said.
Equally, the officer held that some of the girls would have been convinced to execute the mission, especially if they are dependants of dead sect members. “It is possible to brainwash them about avenging the death of their fathers or brothers. They are deaths that are emotional and can make the bereaved susceptible to being pushed to take revenge, especially when such killings are shown to them to have been done unjustly by state actors,” the officer explained.
As the nation and its security agents are engrossed in search for answers and solutions to the new and deadly prowl of female suicide bombers, security experts said the only headway that has been achieved, was the arrest in Funtua of three suspects. “They would help us understand who the girls are, where they are kept and who trained them,” a security officer explained.
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