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Soldiers withdrew from check points before Yobe attack

Published

11 years ago

February 27, 2014

As the nation mourns the recent Boko haram attack in Yobe which
has claimed many young lives, Nasir el rufai reposted an article
from a news site suggesting that the Nigerian army mysteriously
withdrew from their position near the area a couple of hours before
the attack.
The article quotes Yobe State governor Ibrahim Gaidam as the
one revealing these allegations, It goes:
The governor of Yobe State, Ibrahim Gaidam has disclosed that
Soldiers guarding a checkpoint near the Federal government
College Buni Yadi, were gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram
members laid siege in the early hours of Tuesday were mysteriously
withdrawn hours before the attack.
The governor who spoke through his spokesman, Abdullahi Bego
said survivors and community leaders told Gov. Ibrahim Gaidam
when he visited the now-deserted and destroyed secondary school
70 kilometers south of the state capital, Damaturu.
“The community complained to the governor that yesterday the
military were withdrawn and then the attack happened,” he said.
Despite the fact that the nearest military base was a unit of about
30 soldiers in Buni Gari town, 2 kilometers away from the school,
the community leaders of Buni Yadi said soldiers from Damaturu
did not arrive until noon, hours after the attackers had finished
their work and taken off.
According Bego, the community leaders said they buried the bodies
of 29 victims. Most appeared to be between 15 and 20 years old.
Female students were spared in the attack, Bego said, adding that
the attackers went to the female hostel, told the young women to go
home, get married and abandon western education which according
to them is an anathema to Islam.
He said the entire complex of the relatively new school had been
burned out by firebombs – six dormitories, the administrative
building, staff quarters, classrooms, a clinic and the kitchen.
The militants locked the door of one dormitory where male students
were sleeping and then set it ablaze, slitting the throats of those who
tried to clamber out of windows and gunning down those who ran
away, said teacher Adamu Garba.
Some students were burned alive in the attack that began around 2
a.m., he said.
Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a string of deadly attacks – more
than 300 civilians killed this month alone.
Just hours before the attack, President Goodluck Jonathan during
a media chat Monday night dismissed charges the military is losing
the war against the Boko Haram sect.
He suggested he could withdraw the military from Borno state and
see how long Governor Kashim Shettima, could remain in his
official residence for daring to say that the Boko Haram are
“better motivated and better armed than the Nigerian military.”
Jonathan said the Boko Haram attacks are “quite worrisome” but
that he is sure “We will get over it.”