Borno State Government has revealed that one of the suspected female suicide bombers who killed 18 people in Gwoza, a town near the border with Cameroon, on Saturday, came to the venue begging for alms shortly before the explosion took place.
This was disclosed by the state Commissioner for Local Government and Emirates Affairs, Sugum Mai Mele, when he featured as a guest on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
The coordinated attacks, carried out by the women, affected a wedding, a hospital and a funeral in Tashan Mararaba and Gwoza town in the state.
But Mele said they discovered during the debriefing of some suspects detained at the site of the explosion that the attackers beat the military screening by mingling with the women returning from the farms.
He said, “It was discovered from the ladies who were detained for briefing at the bomb blast (site) that they are in fact, indigenes. But they smuggled in the bomb through some women coming back from their farms. They usually go to their farms in the morning. They came in through the military gates. These people were smuggled in.
“As the former Speaker has rightly said, it is the laxity of the part of the screening exercise. Before now, when the farmers were going out, they issued tax and would be registered. In the evening when they come back, they will be marked in the register that they have come back. Anybody who didn’t come in may be arrested or not allowed to go in.
“What happened here was that the women were allowed in with the men that went to the farm with them. We heard one of them was even carrying a baby. She went to the venue of the incident. She was begging and people have even started giving her incentives like N20, N50, and N100. She had been collecting the money in the name of a beggar. So suddenly, she just detonated the bomb. This is what is happening.”
When asked to confirm if the women were from the area and not foreigners as being speculated in some quarters, the commissioner nodded.
According to him, some of the suspects debriefed affirmed that they had only recently returned to their ancestral homes after they were previously displaced by insurgents.
“Some of the women brought in for debriefing were earlier displaced. Some were in Maiduguri and Cameroon. So when the security situation improved, they went back to their ancestral homes to pick up the pieces of their lives after the military allowed them to return.
“They have cleared and started harvesting their farms. They are residing in Gwoza permanently. I think there should be some seriousness in the screening exercise on the indigenes because Gwoza is a densely populated area. They have a population of over 30,000 households and we can’t know all their identities,” he stated.
On Monday, Vice President Kashim Shettima confirmed that the death toll from the bomb blast has hit 32.
The former Borno governor disclosed this when he paid a condolence visit to the victims and families of those who lost their lives in the gory attacks.
This was disclosed in a statement issued by the VP’s spokesman, Stanley Nkwocha.
Shettima was also said to have made a personal donation to the affected families of those killed by the multiple explosions, saying the heart of President Bola Tinubu was with them.
He said, “The heart of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is with the victims and he specifically instructed us to come and offer our condolences and commiserations to the victims of this incident.
“We are here with the Director General of NEMA, with the Minister of Agriculture, with the Minister of Transportation, and, of course, the Chief Whip of the Senate, a son of the soil from Gwoza, who was here since yesterday (Sunday), and the Acting Governor. They have been working round the clock to provide succour and support to the victims.