.
Just wondering how such a kind and lovely boy of a wealthy Nigerian banker’s family would choose to take down an airliner with 300 passengers on board.
(BBC News) Aug. 1, 2000 – The expansion of Sharia has been broadly welcomed by the Muslim majority in the north of Nigeria but opposed by the Christian minority.
Its introduction has led to major unrest in other states, and more than 1,000 people have died in clashes over the issue.
Some northern Nigerian politicians, dissatisfied with the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is a Christian southerner, have used Sharia as a political tool. But there is also a genuine popular enthusiasm for it, and some politicians have been swept along by this tide.
(Afrik.com) Aug. 17, 2009 – The presence of an al-Qaeda branch operating across the Sahara Desert in Mauritania, Morocco, Mali and Niger and Nigeria’s porous borders have sharpened such fears.
Following the attacks by Boko Haram across northern Nigeria last month, which left seven-hundred people dead, observers believe that increasing anti-western sentiments amongst similar groups could lead to attacks on the country’s oil infrastructure, which is increasingly important to the west.
Despite these fears, there is no evidence linking Nigerian radical Muslims to the global jihadists, or Osama Bin Laden’s group, despite several arrests by the government and two warnings from the United States about potential attacks on its interests in the country.
Mannir Dan Ali, a journalist with Abuja-based Trust newspapers, says there was a minor incident in early June which appeared to spark a series of statements from the group threatening reprisals.
“The whole situation seems to be a failure of intelligence, a failure of the security forces to act before matters reached the point that they have now reached.”
There has been widespread criticism of the security forces for their perceived laxness in monitoring the group. Boko Haram’s members are largely drawn from disaffected youth – university students and jobless graduates among them.
Aminu Abubakar, a journalist covering the area for the AFP news agency, says it is widely believed that the authorities have been reluctant to deal with the militants because some of them come from rich families with connections to the government.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
