Destroying Lives in Nigeria

"I think they are going to recruit them. That is we know they do with young boys. They are raping the women and they are taking the young boys to their camps and teaching them everything about what they are doing."
"If you are going for three kilometres to buy your fish, you cannot do that. If your fields are two or three kilometres away, you cannot go. They are just killing any people who they find."
"I had to lie down and crawl because the bullets were flying. Bodies were lying everywhere. I saw hundreds of bodies."
"Boko Haram are just terrorists. They are not for Islam -- they are not for anything. They are just for killing people."
Nasiru Saidu, 43, trader, Doron Baga, Nigeria

The Nigerian shore of the southern fringe of the Sahara has been dominated by Boko Haram as they pillage and burn entire towns, killing people, taking hostages as slave labour, and young boys to train as future militant-terrorists. Nigeria's army, representing the largest country in Africa with a huge oil income, has been outgunned and outfought, losing control of a huge territory where hundreds of thousands of people have been abandoned, to be preyed upon by Boko Haram.

Desperate refugees have fled to neighbouring countries of Niger, Cameroon and Chad. And even there they cannot find surcease from the predations of Boko Haram, when the Islamists invaded Chad, attacking a village 16 kilometers from the Nigerian border. People from Doron Baga, a fishing town in Nigeria, fled the destruction of their town early in January.

The terrorists faced no opposition as they rounded up all the men in Doron Baga. That village and another were captured and put to the torch. The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, had a vendetta against the men of Baga and Doron Baga because they attempted to form vigilante militias to meet the threats from Boko Haram. All the men were shot dead. They took the women and children.

If a town or village captured by Boko Haram puts up no resistance they are spared immediate slaughter. Residents are assembled to learn through a general announcement that they have become citizens of the new "Islamic Caliphate" being built across Africa. Young men and boys are taken off for training and indoctrination while girls are carried off as sex slaves for fighters, and mature women become domestic servants.

Life under Boko Haram is gruellingly difficult; people's traditional method of livelihoods are taken from them. North-eastern Nigeria has depended on the use of ancient trade routes through Niger, Chad and the Sahara. Now those arteries have been blocked by war. Goods can no longer be carried over the lake to Chad in a day. Travel now must be from Nigeria to Chad through a ,60 kilometre route through Niger, a month's journey.

Africa has been fairly dilatory in helping itself overcome the predations of this Islamist fanatical group of terrorists. The continent serves itself ill through most of its varied countries with civil wars, corrupt governments, and a general aura of disinterest in the need to protect its vulnerable people from the ravages of psychopathic criminals doing the work of Islam.