Boko Haram by Mike Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

that they could venture outside again, reopen their market stalls and even send their children to schools with less worry. The phones were still cut, but there did not appear to be a major uproar over it in Maiduguri itself as many residents saw it as a legitimate sacrifice for peace.
    The insurgents’ response to the military offensive and formation of vigilante groups appeared to be to largely abandon the cityof Maiduguri. They were said to have fled to border areas near Cameroon, Chad or Niger, particularly in the region’s Gwoza hills. The border with Cameroon was considered especially porous, and local residents spoke of Boko Haram members crossing back and forth, sometimes carrying out robberies and attacks on the Nigerian side, occasionally slitting the throats of their victims in a show of force. Unconfirmed rumours spread over whether Shekau had been killed, while the military later claimed he ‘may have died’ after being shot in a clash with troops and taken over the border into Cameroon for treatment, but provided no proof. Shekau had been rumoured or declared to be dead several times before, only to later appear in video and audio messages. A man who seemed to be Shekau would repeatedly appear in more videos after the military statement on his supposed death. Yet another resurrection had occurred, it seemed.
    Earlier hints of a new pattern of attacks would later prove to be true, with a terrifying series of civilian massacres beginning to unfold. It was widely believed such attacks were partly in revenge for the formation of the vigilante groups and for residents’ cooperation with them in reporting insurgents’ movements. Two attacks on schools in June saw gunmen shoot dead 16 students and 2 teachers. 4 They were similar to an attack the previous March in Maiduguri at the Sanda Kyarimi Senior Secondary School. Months later, a security guard walked the school grounds at Sanda Kyarimi with me and explained how it occurred.
    According to the security guard, 35-year-old Ahmed Jidda, he and the school disciplinarian were at the school’s front gate on a Monday morning trying to usher in stragglers who were arriving late when two people with AK-47s forced their way in and began shooting sporadically. He said the attackers looked like teenagers, guessing they were between 15 and 18 years old. They were not wearing masks. They made their way across the large open yard ringed by single-storey buildings housing classrooms on the school grounds, at one point throwing a homemade bomb that did notexplode. Students and teachers panicked, taking cover or running to find a way out, as the attackers continued to fire their weapons. At one classroom, they shot inside at a teacher, killing him. Jidda showed me the classroom, and on the day I visited there were lessons on the English alphabet written neatly on the blackboard, with classes having since resumed at the school after a temporary closure. Jidda said he had managed to climb over a part of the wall surrounding the school, then run to a nearby military outpost to alert the soldiers. By then it was too late. The gunmen left after their brief flurry of violence. Besides the teacher they killed, four girls who were students were wounded, one of whom later died.
    By July 2013, Nigerians had seen several such school attacks, but one that would occur in the town of Mamudo in Yobe state would lead to widespread disgust. The attackers stormed a secondary boarding school in the town, opening fire and throwing explosives inside a dormitory, burning students to death. A total of 42 people were killed, mostly students. President Jonathan’s spokesman would break from the usual condemnations and promises of action, saying those responsible ‘will certainly go to hell’. 5
    It began to seem that nothing was off limits to the attackers any more. As if to prove the point, the following month in the town of Konduga, gunmen stormed a mosque and killed