Boko Haram targets Gov Kashim’s convoy

                               

An explosive device believed to have been thrown by the Boko Haram and targeted at the convoy of Gov Kashim Shettima yesterday afternoon in Maiduguri went off few minutes after the governor’s convoy passed the area.

Governor Kashim who was received at the Maiduguri Airport yesterday afternoon by thousands of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) supporters was riding in a long convoy which included senior government officials, ANPP chieftains and friends of the governor following the favourable verdict of the Justice Sani Adamu-led Borno Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja last week.

But shortly after driving past the Airport-Bulunkutu Road to the Government House with the party supporters in a big funfair, an explosive believed to have been thrown by the Boko Haram men went off. The governor who arrived the state from Abuja at about 3.30 pm was just about a kilometre from the Bulunkutu end, the scene of the incident, when the blast was heard, causing panic among residents and some of the supporters who had come to cheer the governor.

A military officer said the explosion was targeted at the convoy of the governor but maintained the tight security measures put in place by the police and the Joint Task Force to ensure the reception organize to celebrate the governor’s victory at the tribunal “might have forced the bombers to beat a retreat by only creating panic with the blast almost 40 minutes after the governor convoy had passed.”
JTF Operational Officer, Colonel Victor Ebheleme told Daily Sun the blast was not an explosion. “How can you call that one an explosion, it was just a small thing in a small container. It is not a bomb blast at all,” he maintained. 
Police Commissioner, Simeon Midenda said the blast came from a canister thrown at a police patrol vehicle, adding that, “it did not affect either the targeted vehicle or any person around.”

But the governor was however undeterred as he continued to wave at the thick crowd while the convoy proceeded. He later told journalists shortly after arriving the Government House Maiduguri that his government “will continue to toe the path of peace and negotiation.” He called on the opposition party to “sheathe their swords of political hostility and join him in running the state.
He said though the victory was a thing of joy to him and his party, but noted that he did not even enjoy the luxury of a protracted legal tussle in Borno taking into cognizance the developmental challenges and the insurgency facing us in the state. “So I wish to once again implore on members of the opposition to sheathe their swords and come and join hands with us for the greater glory of Borno”
Governor Shettima appealed to the people of the state to join him in administering the state especially as the election petition matter was believed to be over.

“I do not claim the monopoly of knowledge and with all sense of humility, I call on all and sundry to join hands with us as Borno is for all of us and it is our duty to see that we have catapulted the state to the highest level of development; for our people have suffered more than enough and it now beholds all of us to ensure that their suffering are alleviated,” he disclosed.

From TIMOTHY OLA, Maiduguri