Troops in Maiduguri, Borno State, ‘mistakenly’ opened fire on the convoy
of Governor Kashim Shettima as it approached a military garrison near
the airport.Shettima was on his way to visit soldiers, who were
wounded in the simultenous Boko Haram attacks on Maiduguri, Monguno
and Kodunga when the incident occurred on Monday.Security sources,
according toSaharaReporters, said the governor’s protocol unit was to
blame for the incident as it failed to notify the military authorities
about Shettima’s intention to visit the military facility on Monday
evening.An aide to the governor was quoted by the online news portal
as having said that the governor, who was unharmed in the encounter,
returned to his office unruffled.The report however did not say if
anyone in the convoy was hurt. It also was silent on whether or not
Shettima’s security aides returned fired.A Government House source
however claimed that the governor’s convoy heard sporadic gunshots about
one kilometre from the 33 Battalion and therefore made a U-turn.the
rumours that the gunshots were by Boko Haram insurgents that were
attacking people at Njimtilo.He added that Shettima stopped his convoy
at the 707 Housing Estate to calm tensions and debunk Our correspondents
could not get the spokesman for the 7th Div., Col S.K. Usman, to
comment on the issue as calls to his mobile did not connect.Attempts
to also get the reaction of the Director of Press and Communication to
the governor, Mallam Isa Gusau, were unsuccessful as of the time of
filing this report.Calls to his mobile indicated that it was either
switched off or out of coverage area.But the state Commissioner for
Infromation, Mohammed Bulama, said what happened was a “friendly
gunshot.”“It was not an attack on the governor. It was a friendly
gunshot that was not directed at Gov. Shettima nor his convoy. The shots
were fired into the air by soldiers who were hailing the governor for
saluting their effort in repelling the insurgents.”Fleeing
residents of Monguno on Tuesday told The PUNCH in Maiduguri, that
corpses of people were decomposing on the streets of the captured
town.One of them, Babagana Modu, who arrived in Maiduguri on Monday
evening, said, “The pathetic thing is that our dead family members are
allowed to decompose on the streets without burial.“The fools
(insurgents) are treating us worse than an animal. Definitely, these
people do not know any God.”A woman, Yagana Mohammed, who lost her
husband and two children to the attack, said she would have preferred
to die too.She said, “I would have liked to be killed with my dead
husband rather than living with the memory of the day he was
slaughtered. The matter is made worse by the fact that there would
be no grave for me to show to my other surviving children.“How will I
explain to them when they grow up that their father and brothers were
slaughtered and left to rot on the streets.”The military is however
still engaging the insurgents in a battle to reclaim the town.It was
gathered that more troops were deployed in the town with an
instruction to chase the terrorists out .“As I am speaking to you our
men are still engaging the insurgents and hopefully they will push them
back soon and allow the people of the town to return home,” a military
source told The PUNCH.Meanwhile, a suspected Boko Haram bomb maker has
been arrested by security operatives in Potiskum, Yobe State.The man,
identified simply as Ba’na, is suspected to be behind the fabrication of
explosives used in a series of Boko Haram suicide attacks.According to
an Agence France Presse report on Tuesday, the suspect was arrested with
nine accomplices.“He confessed to being responsible for the manufacture
of the explosives used in at least three suicide attacks and the car
explosion outside the divisional police station,” a police officer told
the AFP.Ba’na was said to have moved to Potiskum from Damaturu three
years ago and worked as a stonemason and water vendor before getting
married.“He was quite good at his disguise and his mason and water
vending jobs gave him perfect cover,” the officer said.But the spokesman
for the Nigerian Police Force, Emmanuel Ojukwu, told the news agency
that he did not have any information on the arrest.Potiskum, the
commercial capital of Yobe State, has been hit by a wave of bombings in
recent months, including a suicide attack on a secondary school in
November in which 58 people were killed.
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