Boko Haram: We snatch cars for suicide bombings –Abu Qaqa

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Detained Boko Haram spokesman, Abu Qaqa, yesterday gave more hints to the State Security Service (SSS) on how the group sourced cars for suicide bombings. In his further testimony to the SSS, Qaqa, the dreaded henchman, said the cars they use in suicide bombings are neither bought for the mission nor gotten as enhancement by financiers.

They are actually snatched cars, procured by the use of force by the actors, who get them at gunpoint with an original intent on what they would be used for.

Qaqa said: “We snatch those vehicles at gunpoint. We use the less exotic ones for suicide bombings. As we get them, we just load them with bombs, drive them near our target, park, get out of them and leave them to explode thereafter. But in some few instances, the drivers who have been destined to die in the act by the leadership drive the bomb-laced cars into obstacles to enable them detonate.”

He spoke further in an indictment of the leader of the group, Imam Shekau. According to him: “the leadership – Shekau and kinsmen, take the expensive (exotic) ones always, saying that he would arrange for them to be sold and the proceeds put into the Jihad. This is never done, anyway.

“But those retained cars are put into other uses by the leadership of the sect – Shekau and his Kanuri brothers in blood. They serve two purposes – one to be used by the powerful leaders as status symbol within the group. The second reason is to serve as decoy against security. Because the police and other security agencies at checkpoints hardly stop to search such vehicles or request the identity of the users, Shekau and his henchmen latch unto this lapse or advantage and cruise about in them to do their business of further violence without let or molestation.
“Most of those vehicles end up with him and the Kanuri members of our sect. They use them, pose in them to deceive security agents at checkpoints”, Qaqa stated.

Another fact is the use of proceeds of the cars, not sent to the crematorium of bombing, are put to when sold. He revealed that if they are sold, what the proceeds go into is the exclusive preserve of Shekau and his close allies.
On the distribution or sharing of the left-over cars, he said: “The distribution or utilization of these stolen vehicles is on ‘man-know-man’ or ‘man-know-tribe

sman’. This also became another source of anger and acrimony but you have to bear it or you die. Once you are in, you are in. If you attempt to leave, you are seen as a traitor who must die.”

Recall that two weeks ago, Qaqa in his song blurted out that the sharing and use of N41million booty the group made in a bank raid caused bad blood in the group. So, his revelation again of the distribution of snatched cars among kinsmen of the leader as another source of acrimony lays credence to the fact that Boko Haram might not be tightly sutured in unity and purpose as earlier believed.

His position to the SSS is that it is coercion rather than cohesion that drives the actions of the group. The members, in fear, toe the line of the leadership because any dissent means paying the ultimate price. Through the revelations of Qaqa, the SSS raided the home of a kingpin in Madalla, Niger State last Friday where they recovered pornographic materials and other security documents. The suspected kingpin, Bashir Madalla, is still at large even as the SSS has declared a manhunt for him.