Suicide Bomber Hits Magali Bauchi Killing 6, several others injured

Remains of a Female Suicide Bomber.

Suicide bombers killed a minimum of six people and wounded fourteen in a over flowing market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Madagali on Friday, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said.
A police representative had earlier said 15 were killed, and didn't establish any suspects.
Suicide bombings are common in Nigeria's northeast, the centre of a bloody campaign by Islamist group Boko Haram to form an Islamic state. Madagali was also hit last month, when female child suicide bombers killed as many as 56 people in an exceedingly coordinated attack on a market.
Friday's attacks, which bore the hallmark of islamist militant group Boko Haram, followed a twin attack of bombings last week in Borno state, where the Boko Haram insurgence began, undermining a presidential announcement last month that the militants had been pushed out of their last defence in the northeast.
A man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has appeared in a video denying President Muhammadu Buhari's statement that the Islamist group had been ousted from the region.
Boko Haram's seven-year-old insurgence, aimed toward establishing a medieval-style caliphate in the northeast of Africa's most populous nation, has killed there about 15,000 people and displaced up to 2 million people.
Aid teams and international organisations now warn of a looming humanitarian crisis as people displaced by the insurgence have become prone to illness and famine, even within camps established to shelter them.
In early 2015, Boko Haram controlled an area about the dimensions of Belgium, but has been driven out of much of it over the past year by Nigeria's army and troops from neighbouring countries.
Boko Haram insurgents have since disengaged to a base within the Sambisa forest, an enormous former game reserve in Borno state.
Security analysts say the jihadists' ability to carry out attacks in neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad suggests that it has multiple bases.

Boko Haram attacks; 5 soldiers killed

Kano - Not less than 5 soldiers were killed in a surprise weekend attack by Boko Haram Islamists on a military base in northeast Nigeria, senior officers told afp on today.

A group of Boko Haram fighters launched an attack on the military facility in the city of Buni Yadi at sundown on Saturday, resulting in an "intense battle", one officer said on condition of obscurity.

"We lost 5 soldiers in the attack, as well as a captain who was recently deployed to Buni Yadi," he said, asking not to be identified as he wasn't authorised to talk to the media.

"We are still making an attempt to have a sense of the casualties on the part of the terrorists as their bodies are scattered in the bush."

The Boko Haram gunmen are believed to have regrouped when Nigeria's military chased them out of the group's Sambisa Forest fortress in the neighbouring state of Borno last month.

Nigeria's military and government maintains the Islamic State cluster affiliate is a spent force because of sustained pressure that has driven them out of swathes of captured territory.

Suicide Bomber Blasts Maiduguri on New Year's eve

Picture from the Blast

A suicide hit Maiduguri, the Borno State capital on New Year's Eve, as indicated by the police spokesman in Maiduguri , Victor Isuku. 

Isiaku in an sms to a reporter said, "information reaching me now is that there was a blast at custom region. 

"Preparatory points of interest accessible is that lone the suicide was killed. Presently on standby for more details soonest." 

A resident, Abba Mustapha said the bomber hit a tea drinking joint at customs close to the Nigerian Customs Service office. 

He said that numerous people were murdered in the blast.

Boko Haram's Shekau Shows up: Group is not Crushed.

According to reports on Nigerian Daily (Vanguard) Ibrahim Shekau, the embattled Leader of the Boko Haram sect has come out in a new video to dispute claims by the Federal Government and the Nigerian Army that the Jihadist group has been ousted out of sambisa forest.

"We are very safe and sound, we have not been ousted out of anywhere. No strategy or tactics can reveal our location except Allah wills by his decree" says Shekau in a 25 minutes video surrounded by armed fighters

Chibok girl recalls "miracle" release by Boko Haram as reunited with family

YOLA, Nigeria (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Boko Haram militants decided to release some of the 200 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped two-and-a-half years ago in northeast Nigeria, Asabe Goni did not dare to dream that she would be among the girls allowed to go home.

During their time in captivity the girls were encouraged to convert to Islam and to marry their kidnappers, with some whipped for not doing so, but Goni said otherwise they were treated well and fed well until supplies recently ran short.

Hungry and ill, the 22-year-old did not even have the energy to stand up in October when the Islamist militants said that any girls who wanted to be released should line up. She just sat and watched as other girls scrambled to get into line.

"I was surprised when they announced that my name was on the list," Goni told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the first interview by one of the 21 freed girls to international media.

"It was a miracle," she said, while expressing regret that she had to leave behind her cousin who was also abducted.

A group of 21 girls was released two months ago after Switzerland and the International Red Cross brokered a deal with the Boko Haram. They have been held since in a secret location in the capital Abuja for debriefing by the Nigerian government.

But the girls have been taken back to the Chibok area in Borno state to spend Christmas with their families, returning home for the first time since being seized from their school in April 2014, an act that sparked global outrage.

"I was very happy when they said I should go home," Goni said in an interview in her family's home in the northern city of Yola, surrounded by her father, stepmother, five siblings and several neighbours.

The kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014 hit international headlines and prompted global figures, including U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and a list of celebrities, to support a campaign #BringBackOurGirls.

But none of the girls were sighted again until May this year when one of the students, Amina Ali, was found in a forest with a baby and a man claiming to be her husband.

Her discovery prompted hopes that the girls were alive and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to ensure the release of the remaining girls in captivity.

"GIVEN UP HOPE"

Recalling the abduction, Goni said the girls, which included her younger cousin Margaret with whom she had lived since she was a child, trekked for three days through Sambisa forest, Boko Haram's vast woodland stronghold, before they arrived at a camp.

"I was in great pain," she said. "Many of us didn't stop crying until about three months after we were kidnapped."

While the girls were not forced to convert to Islam, the militants told them that they would all be sent home if they did so, said Goni. Neither were they forced to marry, she added.

"But the way they talked to us about it, you would be afraid not to," she said, recalling how the girls were sometimes flogged with a whip. "That is why some were convinced to marry."

Goni said the girls were otherwise treated well by the militants. They were given material to sew clothes and fed three times a day until recently when food became scarce.

The girls told state officials they were not abused or raped by the militants, and all tested negative for sexually transmitted diseases, according to a confidential report based on a two-week debriefing prepared for Buhari and seen by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in November.

When Goni was released, she did not have time to say goodbye to Margaret, whom she calls her sister, or the other girls.

"Some of the other girls left behind started crying," she said. "But the Boko Haram men consoled them, telling them that their turn to go home would come one day."

Nigerian authorities say they are involved in negotiations aimed at securing the release of more of the girls, while the army has captured a key Boko Haram camp in Sambisa forest, Buhari said earlier today.

Far away from negotiations and army operations, Goni chatted with her siblings and helped her mother prepare breakfast as she spoke of her excitement of going to church on Christmas Day.

"I never knew that I would return (home)," Goni said. "I had given up hope of ever going home."

Credit: Thomson Reuters Foundation

FG Denies Report About the release of CHIBOK Girls.

The Nigerian government has denied reports claiming the release of another set of 21 Chibok school girls abducted by Boko Haram.

Reports had claimed that the girls, who were kidnapped in April 2014, had been transported to Yola, Adamawa State, after their release on Thursday.

Presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu denied that more girls had been released.

“No new girls have been released,” Shehu tweeted.

“To my friends spreading the news of a further release of Chibok Girls, we are not there yet. But, by God’s grace, they will be. Happy Christmas, everyone.”

Shehu said the 21 girls reported Thursday were those released in October. He said they were being escorted by security to Yola on their way home to celebrate the Christmas with their families.

“Today, the DSS took the 21 Girls already secured to Yola, Adamawa State on their way home to celebrate the Christmas with their families.

“The negotiations are ongoing and the Department of State Service, DSS is full of optimism that they will be successful,” he wrote.

More than 200 girls were seized from their school in April 2014 in Chibok in Borno state, where Boko Haram has waged a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state, killing thousands and displacing more than 2 million people.

Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of men, women and children but the abduction of the Chibok girls – some 200 of whom are still missing – prompted outrage worldwide and their plight was publicised using a Twitter hashtag, #bringbackourgirls.

The first of the Chibok girls to be released by Boko Haram, Amina Ali, was freed in May. Ali has since been held in a house in Abuja for what the state has called a “restoration process”. She said in August that she “just wanted to go home”.

Boko Haram controlled a swathe of land around the size of Belgium at the start of 2015, but Nigeria’s army has recaptured most of the territory.

The group still stages suicide bombings in the northeast, as well as in neighbouring Niger and Cameroon.