Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - nigerian students killed--guardian report

One can appreciate that the Boko Haram crisis is a very serious and increasingly complex one and that the government is trying to do all it thinks it can to handle it. I also understand the need for government to show resolve and to demonstrate to the world that Boko Haram cannot and will not shut down the education of children and adults in Nigeria. However, such a resolve requires that any school that must remain open in the high risk areas and, indeed, any popular and soft target of Boko Haram in those areas, should come under an iron cast system of protection that would prevent the wasting of precious human life in such a ghastly manner as have occurred again and again. Other wise, I can only vote for the closure of those schools or, if government cannot be persuaded to do that, for parents to recall their children and save them from harms way.  If it takes consolidating 3 or 4 schools into one and relocating them to a safer zone where protection can be afforded on a steadier and more effective way, I think it should be done. Perhaps some form of on-line program, with requisite assistance from capable quarters within and without the country, should temporarily replace or supplement education in these high risk areas. I see nothing wrong in government taking some of the emergency funds to distribute some of these students to other states or local governments where continued schooling is possible. Whatever the case may be, I sincerely feel  that political ideals or resolves and mere showcasing of government capacity should not be made more important than the precious livs of multitudes of youths, the very hope of our nation. The criticalness of the situation, the seriousness of the risk and the difficulty, even of superpowers, to deal single blows to terrorism, should be allowed room in deciding whether or not any school in those high risk area should or should not remain open. This killing is absolutely horrific , mind numbing. I hope we dont get used to it!!!!

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From: "kenneth harrow" <harrow@msu.edu>
To: "usaafricadialogue" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2013 9:14:50 AM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - nigerian students killed--guardian report

Nigeria students killed in college attack

Dozens shot dead by suspected Islamic militants in night-time assault in country's north-east similar to those on schools nearby

• Associated Press in Potiskum

• 
  
• theguardian.com, Sunday 29 September 2013 08.44 EDT

Police truck bombed by Boko Haram in Damaturu, Yobe state, Nigeria. An early morning attack on a college 40km away has killed as many as 50 students. Photograph: Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images

Suspected Islamic extremists gunned down dozens of students as they slept in their dormitories during a night-time attack on an agricultural college in north-east Nigeria, the school's provost said.

As many as 50 students may have been killed in the assault that began at about 1am local time on Sunday, said Molima Idi Mato, provost of the Yobe State College of Agriculture in Gujba.

"They attacked our students while they were sleeping, they opened fire at them," he said, but could not give an exact death toll as security forces still were recovering bodies from the college.

The Nigerian military had collected 42 bodies and transported 18 injured students to Damaturu specialist hospital, according to a military intelligence official.

The school's other 1,000 students fled the college, about 25 miles (40km) north of Damaturu town, where there have been similar attacks on schools as part of a continuing Islamist uprising, said Mato.

He said there were no security forces stationed at the college despite government assurances that they would be deployed. The state education chief, Mohammed Lamin, held a news conference two weeks ago in which he urged all schools to reopen and promised protection from soldiers and police.

Most schools in the area closed after militants on 6 July killed 29 pupils and a teacher, burning some alive in their hostels, at Mamudo, outside Damaturu.

North-east Nigeria is under a military state of emergency to battle the Islamist uprising by Boko Haram militants who have killed more than 1,700 people since 2010 in their quest for an Islamic state. Boko Haram means "western education is forbidden" in the local Hausa language.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau last week published a video to prove he is alive and was not killed in during the crackdown by the military.

Government and security officials claim they are winning their war on terror in the north-east despite the attacks.

The Islamic extremists have killed at least 30 other civilians in the past week.

Twenty-seven people died in separate attacks on Wednesday and Thursday night in two villages of Borno state near the north-east border with Cameroon, according to the local council chairman, Modu-Gana Bukar Sheriiff.

The military spokesman did not respond to requests for information on those attacks, but a security official confirmed the death toll.

Also on Thursday, police said suspected Islamic militants killed a pastor, his son and a village head and torched their Christian church in Dorawa, about 60 miles from Damaturu. They said the gunmen used explosives to set fire to the church and five homes.

Farmers and government officials are fleeing threats of imminent attacks from Boko Haram in the area of the Gwoza Hills, a mountainous area with caves that shelter the militants despite repeated aerial bombardments by the military.

A local government official said there had been a series of attacks in recent weeks and threats of more. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his life, said Gwoza town was deserted when he visited it briefly under heavy security escort on Thursday.

He said militants had chased medical officers from the town's government hospital, which had been treating some victims of attacks. He added that militants had burned down three public schools in the area.

The official said the Gwoza local government has set up offices in Maiduguri, the state capital to the north.

More than 30,000 people have fled the terrorist attacks to neighbouring Cameroon and Chad and the uprising combined with the military emergency has forced farmers from their fields and vendors from their markets.

--   kenneth w. harrow   faculty excellence advocate  professor of english  michigan state university  department of english  619 red cedar road  room C-614 wells hall  east lansing, mi 48824  ph. 517 803 8839  harrow@msu.edu

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