Cry of Taraba Boko Haram victim: Please, don’t let me die...And the man died

A dying victim of Boko Haram bomb blast in Taraba State yesterday had just one request to NEMA officials attending to him: “Please, don’t let me die, do everything possible to save me” But as fate had its way, the man died at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Jalingo before help could reach him.

 That was the pathetic fall-out from the attack by the Islamist sect in Jalingo which claimed 11 lives with scores injured. This is coming barely 24 hours after Boko Haram struck at churches within the Bayero University, Kano (BUK) when two profssors and 13 other worshippers were killed. Many people were injured in the attack.

 Last Thursday, the sect carried its war to the media when it bombed The Sun, THISDAY and Moment in Abuja and Kaduna. Five people lost their lives.

Boko Haram hit Jalingo yesterday for the first time when its suicide bomber ran into the convoy of the Commissioner of Police (CP) and denoted bombs which killed no fewer than 11 people. Until yesterday, Taraba remained the only state in the North East that had experienced relative peace since the beginning of the Islamic sect’s uprising in the North, but the early morning bomb explosion changed the situation.

 Daily Sun gathered that the police commissioner was in a convoy of vehicles and dispatch rider on his way to the office at the command headquarters at about 8.45am yesterday when the suicide bomber infiltrated the convoy. Sources said that the bomber might have waited for the CP’s convoy at the gate of the state Ministry of Finance building which is not far from the police headquarters from where he rammed his vehicle on the convoy. “From what we gathered, the bomber parked in front of the Ministry of Finance building and as soon as the convoy of the Commissioner of Police approached the area, the bomber started moving, drove into the convoy and detonated the explosive device,” a senior police officer, who would not want his name in print, disclosed.