"Nobody Is Left In The School Now"

"Although there is (an) increase in troop movement and military hardware deployment in the northeast, people are yet to see the kind of action on the ground that effectively nips criminal and terrorist activities in the bud."
Governor Ibrahim Gaidam, Yobe State, Nigeria

"Sometimes you need courage" in the face of such challenges as the slaughter of thousands of innocents, cautioned Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan who condemned a deadly attack that took place on Sunday night on an agricultural college, killing 50 students as they slept, in the belief that their nation's military was protecting them from any such deadly onslaughts.

Courage, then, trumps the actual presence of protection. Courage to face the reality of impending threats to life and limb. From a terrorist group which takes its name from what is forbidden: Western knowledge and education. Forbidden, that is, by their standards. Holding that what is pure must now be defiled; Islamic teaching is not to be corrupted by exposure to Western ideas.

A screengrab taken on Sept 25, 2013 from a video distributed through an intermediary to local reporters and seen by AFP, shows a man claiming to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau. A man claiming to be the leader of Nigerian Islamist extremist group Boko Haram appeared in a video Wednesday taunting world leaders after the military said he may have been killed. -- PHOTO: AFP 

Because of previous such atrocities when Boko Haram, the country's look-alike Islamist militia to Somalia's al-Shabab, attacked another such college on an earlier occasion, those agricultural schools based on Western models of farming techniques vital to the country's economy and future, shut their doors.

Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture bemoaned that no security forces were present to protect the college.

When only several weeks earlier the state commissioner for education had beseeched schools and colleges to re-open in reflection of their duty to educate and prepare for the future. And promised that all such schools and colleges would be guarded by soldiers and police, against the possibility of any such further attacks.

Boko Haram has stated its pride in having been responsible for the killing of 50 young people, after having attacked and killed 29 pupils and a teacher, burning some of them alive in their hostels at Mamudo outside Damaturu on July 6. This new attack will be adjudged by Boko Haram as being more successful than the last, encouraging them to continue their successful trajectory.

"They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels. They opened fire at them", said Yobe State College of Agriculture Provost Idi Mato. Most of the victims were between the ages of 18 and 22. Forty-two bodies were recovered, along with 18 wounded students, taken to Damaturu Specialist Hospital. Where two of the wounded died later. Almost all killed were Muslims, reflecting the majority make-up of the college's student body.

The attackers came in all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles, some of them in Nigerian military uniforms, according to a surviving student. The terrorists seemed to be knowledgeable of the college layout, choosing to attack the four male hostels, bypassing the one hostel that was reserved for women. "We ran into the bush, nobody is left in the school now", said Ibrahim Mohammed.