Massacre and kidnapping in Nigeria
By Chinazo Enigwe
ABOVE PHOTO: On Tuesday, May 1, showing soldiers standing near the body of a suspected member of the sect known as Boko Haram, following a raid by soldiers at Bubugaje, Sharada neighborhood in Kano, Nigeria. The radical Islamist sect Boko Haram published a video on the Internet Tuesday with images of a smiling suicide bomber, and containing threats against Nigerian journalists and newspapers.
(AP Photos/Salisu Rabiu)
Tragedy has struck. Recently there has been a massacre in the country of Nigeria. In Kato, Nigeria a gunman has shot and killed at least 21 people. Last Sunday in northern Nigeria, a gunman attacked worshippers at church and a worship service on Bayero University campus. According to the Nigerian Red Cross, on the campus, 16 people were killed and 22 were wounded.
Later that day the gunman open fire on five people at a church, including the pastor. The gunmen appeared on motorcycles and made amateur bombs using soda cans, and threw them in the area. There are no suspects as of yet, but the Boko Haram, a jihadist terrorist organization based in the northeast of Nigeria, has been blamed in light of their past terrorism acts.
Meanwhile in south Nigeria there have been numerous reports of kidnapping. For example, recently a Nigerian actress Anita Joseph was abducted along with her two nephews in Lagos, Nigeria. Fortunately they were released, but is still traumatized from the experience. Incidents like these have been affecting Nigerians all over. I've spoke with a Nigerian-American to get their view on what's happening.
Nigerian Philadelphia local, Ifeanyi remarked, "All the things that are happening is very silly...causing extra hardship on people. [The kidnapping] is causing stress on people's mobility, and also adverse effect on the economy." With the reports of murders and kidnapping, it would be a necessity for the city to get a better security system.
In order for better security there needs to be more money, which causes a strain to the citizens of Nigeria. "People are not traveling back home on the events...people are not willing to visit home which is also effecting the economy."
Nigerian citizens are in constant fear of becoming the next victim. The kidnapping and the massacres, is causing tension and hindering some daily activities. But the Nigerian community still holds out hope for peace.
+ Top Story
Former South African President Nelson Mandela was receiving medical treatment for a lung infection on Sunday after spending a second night in a hospital. There was no official update on 94-year-old Mandela's condition, described in a government statement on Saturday as "serious but stable."
It has been five years since Benjamin Todd Jealous became president and chief executive of the NAACP and, in that time, he has ushered in a new era in the nation’s oldest and most prestigious civil rights organization. Since coming to the position in May 2008, Jealous...
Sudanese government troops clashed with rebels in the conflict-wracked state of Southern Kordofan near the border with South Sudan, and each side claimed Monday it inflicted heavy losses on the other.
President Barack Obama (seated center) signed a bill effectively awarding the four young victims of the tragic 1963 Birmingham church bombing with the Congressional Gold Medal. With Alabama representatives Terri Sewell, a Democrat, and Spencer Bachus, a Republican, leading the effort...
When I told MSNBC's Thomas Roberts on May 14th that the Tea Party was "the Taliban wing of American politics", a firestorm erupted. Arguing the IRS was correct to target them for extra scrutiny, I also said, "Here are a group of people who are admittedly racist, who are overtly political" and therefore worthy of IRS concern.
Because of my recent piece regarding The Great Gatsby which opens this week, and the theory, according to one scholar, that Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald's book was actually a black man passing for white, I'm reminded of another major summer blockbuster and the secret history behind it...
With the defeat of apartheid, a new Black leadership runs South African ministries, businesses, and schools but an abusive police force appears to have survived the cultural and social changes. Last year, five thousand complaints were lodged against the South African police...
One of Africa’s wealthiest nations, the home of Africa’s first woman billionaire, turned its bulldozers on the homes of some 5,000 people in an early morning raid close to the capital, Luanda, in an action fiercely condemned by international rights organizations.