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Nigeria’s feared Boko Haram has issued a stark warning by claiming responsibility for a mass kidnapping in the country’s northwest, analysts say.
Hundreds of students were captured by gunmen last Friday at a school in Katsina state.
The shocking operation instantly revived memories of the kidnapping of 276 school children in Chibok, in the northeastern state of Borno, in 2014.
“It’s a terrible political statement,” said Bulama Bukarti, a sub-Saharan Africa analyst at the Tony Blair Institute.
“It is evidence that shows that the jihadist group is now in the northwest,” hundreds of miles (kilometers) from their birthplace, he said.
The attack also served as a reminder of President Muhammadu Buhari’s promises to end Boko Haram, coinciding with a visit to his home state, Katsina.
Until now, Boko Haram and its rival, the Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP) group, had fought an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger, killing more than 36,000 people and displacing about two million.
A four-minute recording released Tuesday showed a voice resembling that of the elusive Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, who claimed the kidnapping.
“I am Abubakar Shekau and our brothers are behind the kidnapping in Katsina,” says the recording, sent to AFP through the same channel as previous messages from Boko Haram.
“We carry out Katsina’s attack so that the religion of Allah is supreme and lowers disbelief.”
Yan Saint-Pierre, an analyst at the Modern Security Consulting Group, said that with this attack Shekau wanted “to show that he was all-powerful and not just confined to his area.”
Military spokesman General John Enenche told Channels TV on Monday that 333 students were missing, but local sources told AFP that more than 500 students were captured.
The region has been attacked by armed groups, called “bandits” by the Nigerian authorities, with hundreds of assailants kidnapping both people and livestock.
But these attacks were not caused by a religious ideology and were simply to demand a ransom.
Media spotlight
Jacob Zenn, a researcher at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, said there was “a growing alliance between bandits from the Northwest and the jihadist group from the Northeast.”
“There are several videos posted by western Nigerian militants showing their loyalty to Shekau,” he said.
“Even Nigerian intelligence sources have been observing that there is a logistics network,” he said, adding that there were also “funding networks.”
Map of Nigeria locating Kankara in the state of Katsina. By (AFP) Others saw it as an attempt to stay in the international spotlight. The 2014 Chibok kidnapping made headlines around the world: more than half of the abducted girls are still missing.
“Chibok is what catapulted Boko Haram to the international media attention,” Bukarti said.
“The moment Chibok is dead now, they want to have another incident” to stay in the spotlight, he said.
Spreading its tentacles
Security experts expressed fear that the jihadists have now spread their tentacles over a huge area, stretching from the edge of the Sahara to Lake Chad.
“The northwest is situated between the northeast, where Boko Haram operates, and the Sahel, where other jihadist groups operate,” Zenn said.
President Buhari, a retired army general, had vowed to eradicate Boko Haram. By Kola Sulaimon (AFP / Archive) “If that section of the country falls into jihadism, that would connect the jihadism of the Lake Chad region with the Sahel.”
The attack also shows the army’s inability to confront Boko Haram.
“It is a symbol of the weakness of the state to ensure the safety of its citizens,” Saint-Pierre said.
Critics of the army had already stepped up verbal attacks on the army after Boko Haram killed at least 76 farmers earlier this month.
The failures are a great embarrassment to Buhari, a retired general and former military ruler.
The latest attack shows “how the government is overwhelmed, the military and the police are overwhelmed,” Bukarti said.
