On tuesday night a blast in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola tore through a marketplace, killing 32 people and wounding 80 others, according to the local authorities and witnesses. The blast occurred at 8:00pm at a market filled with shoppers stocking up on fruits and vegetables for dinner turned into a horrific scene of blood, bodies and mayhem. What didn’t surprise me from reading this article was that no one claimed responsibility, which of course no one would just raise their hand up and admit their responsible for killing all of these people. Officials do suspect that is the militant group Boko Haram who are behind this and an investigation is taking place.Nigeria has increased its fight against Boko Haram as part of a pledge from the new president, Muhammadu Buhari, to finish it off by the end of the year.
The article goes into discussing how earlier on Tuesday, Sambo Dasuki the former president’s national security advisor was arrested for being accused of stealing more than $2 billion dollars. Now my curiosity is why did he steal that much money and for what. Another thing that caught my eye was that just last month he pleaded not guilty for other money laundering charges and was surprised by this recent action. Now I’m not are whether to believe Mr. Dasuki because if he’s already been arrested twice he must really be guilty for these money laundering, but somehow may be covering his tracks.
Nigeria has been working with neighboring countries to root out Boko Haram and is receiving guidance from American and French military officials. “Many of the region’s top officials, as well as international experts, say Boko Haram has lost its footing recently and is no longer capable of overtaking entire villages or kidnapping large groups of people. Instead, official said, the group is left to stage small-scale attacks on markets and other public places.” This statement disturbs me a bit because even if this is true about Boko Haram, no one has the right to kill anyone no matter if its a big scale or small scale killing. Killing is wrong regardless and whoever is responsible for this needs to be found and arrested.
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