•1,000 immigration officers deploy to border points in the North

•Another bomb blast heightens insecurity over World Economic Forum in Abuja.

By Ishaya Ibrahim/Lagos

Two weeks after Nigeria was dumbstruck over the abduction of 234 girls by Boko Haram in Chibok on April 15, there was another explosion on May 1 in Nyanya, Abuja, close to the bus station where at least 70 people died on April 14 in bomb blasts detonated by the Islamic sect.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said 19 people died in the latest explosion and 60 were injured. The blast targeted a police checkpoint.

It is not clear why the area is the target of the terrorists as Nyanya is an ethnic melting pot and religiously mixed.

It could be that the jihadists want to scare off heads of states and company executives attending the World Economic Forum beginning in Abuja on May 7.

The abduction of 234 girls in a government secondary school in Chibok, Borno State has reinforced the hunch of residents in the state that Boko Haram has the backing of government functionaries in the top echelons of power.

They say that was the reason the Islamic sect could move that number of girls from their school to the dreaded Sambisa forest, driving through more than 15 kilometres of road manned by security personnel at check points.

The girls were seized in their hostels on April 15 and driven in a convoy to the jungle. Given their number, it would have taken not less than six vehicles to convey them.

Borno is one of the most policed environments in the world with checkpoints at every 200-metre radius, which makes it difficult to fathom how the convoy could pass undetected.

Borno residents who spoke to TheNiche, including security operatives involved in counter insurgency, said the abduction confirms their fears that officials in the corridors of power are complicit in the crimes committed by Boko Haram.

One of them, a police officer, disclosed that he and his colleagues discuss it in hush tones that Boko Haram successfully carries out attacks because those operating government levers are reluctant to end the menace.

“How can you explain that 234 girls were kidnapped in an area where all the motorable roads have checkpoints at every 200-metre stretch?” he wondered.

“Do you know the kind of logistics needed to move 234 girls and hide them? This is strange.”

On April 30, hundreds of mainly women protesters marched through Abuja to press for the release of the schoolgirls. Dressed in mostly red, the women braved the heavy rain to march to the National Assembly to hand over a letter to complain that Abuja is not doing enough to secure the release of the girls.

The women want the government to do everything possible to rescue the girls, including negotiating with the terrorists.

It is still not clear why the rescue operation is not making a headway, considering the fact that there is clear evidence of where the pupils were taken – Sambisa forest.

There are reports, however, that the girls have been sold off as brides at N2,000 each to other Boko Haram militants, with some of them taken to their camps in Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

The organiser of the Abuja march, Mercy Abang, was quoted by the BBC’s Focus on Africa radio programme that the government should do whatever is necessary, even if it means holding negotiations with the abductors, to ensure the girls return home alive, not in body bags.

The Punch, quoting Channel 4 News in the United Kingdom, reported that a negotiator has been engaged to broker a deal between the government and Boko Haram for the safe release of the girls.

“The girls, we believe, are alive but they have been moved from the location to which they were originally taken. It would not be hard to engineer a deal. It looks like they want to release them. They want a way out,” the negotiator whose name was not mentioned in the report, was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, women activists have condemned the remark credited to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Women Leader, Kema Chikwe, who reportedly expressed doubt that the girls were missing, though she later said her comment was sensationalised.

Chikwe had wondered: “How did it happen? Who saw it happen? Who did not see it happen? Who is behind this?”

Women Arise President, Joe Okei-Odumakin, retorted: “It is a clear reflection of the gap between our so-called leaders and the people they govern.

“Nothing can be more insensitive than that type of a statement because be it one child or a thousand children, the truth is that some innocent children have been abducted and the military authorities have confirmed that.

“It is therefore very unfortunate and insensitive for a woman of Chikwe’s status as a mother herself to try to downplay the agony of those whose children are being held by the terrorist.”

Another activist, Betty Abah, said: “For Chikwe, a mother, to throw all human decency and basic sympathy to the whirlwind and open her mouth with such a moraless force shows the depth to which the PDP, of which she is a leader, has sunk.

“She is by her statement saying that all the agonies and open tears of the parents, the confirmation by the school authorities, state government and security forces, and the huge rally in Abuja led by the Borno State First Lady, amount to mere tales by moonlight.”

Meanwhile, the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) has deployed 1,000 officers to border points in the North East to prevent the jihadists from smuggling the girls out of the country.

The officials were drawn from all the NIS commands nationwide.