By John Chimunhu (News Of The South).
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has appealed for parliamentary approval to borrow $1 billion to fight the deadly Boko Haram insurgency.
Jonathan’s urgent letter of request was submitted to the National Assembly Wednesday amid mounting attacks which left more than 100 people dead across the country since Tuesday.
The president said the money was required by the Nigerian army to “enable them to more forcefully confront this serious threat”.
Local news reports said 36 people were killed by Boko Haram in Borno state on Wednesday while 54 were massacred in Dille and Huyim villages in attacks mainly targetting Christians. Twenty people were killed in the restive Damboa area on Tuesday and another seven were murdered the
next morning when they tried to bury the dead.
On Sunday, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau scoffed at Nigerian army efforts to snuff out the rebels. During a rambling speech on video, Shekau displayed armoured vehicles and tanks he claimed had been captured from the army’s Damboa military base. Firing his AK 47 into the air, Shekau said the weapons would be used by the militants in more ferocious attacks on Nigerians in the coming weeks.
Shekau claimed more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls from Chibok were alive despite a report by an army official that they were dead.
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"Nigerians are saying #BringBackOurGirls, and we are telling Jonathan to bring back our arrested warriors, our army," Shekau said.
He claimed credit for a host of recent attacks on civilian and military targets, including an oil refinery in Lagos and the Damboa military base.
However, Boko Haram suffered losses when suspected terror mastermind Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche was delivered to the Nigerian police by Interpol Wednesday after being extradited from Sudan. Ogwuche was wanted in connection with the April bombing of Abuja’s transport network, which
left 75 dead.
Another leading member of the group, Mohammed Zakari, a.k.a. ‘The Butcher’ was arrested during a raid on the group’s Balmo Forest base last Saturday, according to the police.
The terror group with links to al Qaeda and ISIS has killed at least 10 000 people since launching its deadly offensive five years ago. It says Western education is sin and wants to set up an Islamic state.
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