On Wednesday, July 30, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at Kano State Polytechnic, killing six people and critically injuring six others.
Her target was a group of students who had gone to collect their call-up letters for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). The students were checking their names on the notice board when she struck.
The attack was the fourth by a female suicide bomber in the sprawling city in less than one week.
On Sunday, July 27, another female suicide bomber killed herself while trying to target police officers. The following day, two others struck; one at a petrol station, killing three people.
According to Kano State police spokesman, Musa Magaji Majia, the bomber targeted women who had queued up with her to buy kerosene at a petrol station in the Hotoro area of the city.
She detonated explosives strapped to her upper body at about 10.30am, killing three hapless women, whose only crime was that they were at the petrol station at the wrong time.
About three hours later, another female bomber who was approaching the Trade Fair Complex, blew herself up when policemen confronted her at the gate. Six people were injured, including two police officers.
On Tuesday, July 29, Mike Omeri, the Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), who has become government’s spokesman on security, disclosed that security forces arrested three Boko Haram suspects in Katsina State. Two of them were female.
Then, the blood-chilling revelation: one of the two was a 10-year-old girl who had an explosive belt strapped to her waist.
While using female suicide bombers in Kano might be a new development, Boko Haram had long perfected the heartless act of using women as suicide bombers in their North East stronghold.
What is most alarming now is the regularity. The use of four female suicide bombers in three days calls for concern.
Who are these girls? Where and how are they recruited? Were they conscious of the implication of their actions or were they hypnotised?
Why would a teenage girl strap a bomb around her waist just to kill other women, most of them Muslim peasants who had gone to a petrol station to buy kerosene? What crime did they commit against her?
If Boko Haram says that Western education is evil, did the poor women, most of whom were probably illiterate, go to the petrol station to acquire education? So, what was their offence that death penalty was deemed their lot?
What manner of indoctrination would make a teenage girl bomb fellow human beings who had gone to their school to find out where they were posted for their NYSC programme?
What manner of human beings would strap a bomb around the waist of a 10-year-old girl and send her out on a suicide mission?
And come to think of it, we were told that men are lured into jihad because of the promise of virgins in the life hereafter. Assuming that is true, then the natural question is, if men are motivated by the promise of virgins in suicide attacks, what could be motivating 16-year-old female suicide bombers, some of them virgins?
How many Nigerians have thought of the possibility that the increasing number of female suicide bombers may have something to do with the kidnapped Chibok girls? Could it be that 111 days after, these unfortunate girls have been thoroughly brainwashed and turned into suicide bombers?
I agree with former Education Minister, Obiageli Ezekwesili, who, in a series of tweets last week, urged Nigerians to continue praying for the missing girls.
“It feels like eternity since April 14 when our girls lost their freedom. How can we move on like this? This new trend and serial pattern of female suicide bombers surely should particularly worry us.
“Female suicide bombers are again and again becoming the trend and our Chibok girls are still in the enemy’s den. It worries me stiff. Are we thinking?” she queried.
Yes, are we thinking at all? Imagine these girls being deployed as suicide bombers. That will be the height of callousness. It will be atrocious and despicable. It is only a cold-hearted monster who can even think of that, not to talk of carrying it out.
Boko Haram leaders praise “Allah” for the carnage they are orchestrating in the country and you wonder which god they actually worship. Even if these female suicide bombers are not the kidnapped Chibok girls, the fact remains that they are daughters of some people. And no parent, no matter how insane, no matter the cause he or she claims to be fighting, will deploy his or her daughter as a suicide bomber.
I am convinced beyond doubt that these female suicide bombers are neither Shekau’s daughters nor any of Boko Haram’s honchos. If they are indeed waging Allah’s battle, why are they not using their own children?
In every war, there is a red line. In this asymmetrical war, Boko Haram has crossed the red line by brainwashing innocent teenagers and even children and deploying them as suicide bombers.
Nigerians must for once be decisive in prosecuting this war. Those calling on the federal government to apologise to Boko Haram for killing its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, miss the point. The man was not a saint. He was a villain who ordered the killing of hundreds if not thousands of people, including policemen, in cold blood and set Maiduguri ablaze, literally.
It is time also that Northern leaders cooperated with the federal government in the fight against Boko Haram, rather than playing the ostrich and blaming President Goodluck Jonathan for the monster they created. Jonathan has his problems, and they are legion, but he did not create Boko Haram.
The group is a product of the dominant religious, social and moral values in the North. And leaders of the region must help in exorcising the spectre. If they don’t, sooner than later, Boko Haram will destroy the North; that is, if it has not done so already.
Even if the guns quieten today, it will take aeons to rebuild what has been destroyed.
