After Boko Haram fighters threatened them, they could not risk staying. Over a decade, the extremist group had killed tens of thousands of people in the cross-border scrubland around them. So the residents of Mafa, a village in northeast Nigeria’s Yobe State, fled in terror.... CLICK TO READ THE FULL NEWS HERE▶▶
About two weeks after that evacuation in late July, according to a village leader, a local official told them it was safe to go back.
“The government assured us that everything is OK and nothing is going to happen,” said Mai-Bano Kanembu, the community head of Mafa.
The official named by Mr. Kanembu denies encouraging villagers to return. But return they did.
It was a catastrophic decision that ended last Sunday in fighters killing dozens of villagers, mostly men and boys, and burning Mafa to the ground. At least 170 people were killed, according to Mr. Kanembu and Ibrahim Hassan, a local farmer who helped recover the bodies, and more are missing. A statement listing purported grievances against the village was left at the scene in the name of Islamic State West Africa Province, known as ISWAP, a Boko Haram splinter group.
The attack was a brutal eruption in a conflict with Islamist extremists that has rumbled on for over a decade. Last year, this same group perpetrated three of the 20 deadliest terrorist attacks worldwide, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index. But more people were killed in the assault on Mafa than in all three of those attacks combined.
It came on the heels of another major attack in West Africa — on Barsalogho, a town in Burkina Faso, where members of another terrorist group killed as many as 400 people on Aug. 24, according to victims’ relatives.
Boko Haram, founded in the early 2000s, became infamous internationally in 2014, when the group kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls, known as the Chibok Girls. In 2016, the group split, with one faction, ISWAP, securing recognition from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
After years of factional conflict, ISWAP has recently regrouped, according to the International Crisis Group.
Mr. Hassan, the farmer, said he was returning to Mafa on Sunday after a long day’s plowing when he saw the fighters arrive on dozens of motorbikes, splitting into three groups to surround the village. He hid when he saw them.
When they had passed, he climbed a tree to see what was happening. It was around 4 p.m., and villagers were gathering in the mosque for prayers.
“The next thing we started hearing was rapid gunshots and smoke billowing from all directions,” Mr. Hassan said in a telephone interview.
Another farmer who watched the fighters arrive told Mr. Kanembu that he saw about 50 motorcycles, each carrying two or three men with rifles.
“The insurgents took their time to wreak havoc,” Mr. Kanembu said, explaining that lack of cellphone connection kept the military from learning of the attack for hours.
On Monday and Tuesday, Mr. Hassan and others who had fled Mafa returned to assess the damage and bury the dead. They found every building burned. Bodies surrounded the mosque. Women and young children were alive but deeply traumatized and hungry — everything they owned had been burned. Seven members of Mr. Hassan’s family, including his 15-year-old son Suleiman, had been killed.
“I’ve lost count of the corpses in the village,” Saleh Musa, a community elder, said in an interview. He said 28 bodies were buried in Mafa and 40 in nearby villages, in addition to 34 taken to Babban Gida, the closest town. Many more were still missing, he added. Speaking to journalists on Tuesday at a mass funeral in Babban Gida, a government military adviser insisted, however, that only the deaths of the 34 people buried there had been confirmed.
The fighters strapped some corpses with explosives, targeting those who would recover them, Mr. Musa said.
Those who recovered the bodies also found a long note, which accused residents of collaborating with the authorities and killing Boko Haram members.
“You have been lulled into a false sense of security, mistakenly believing that the Army of the Caliphate’s restraint — our decision not to trouble you, pillage your property, or disrupt your commercial activities and farming — implies weakness,” the note read. “You have grown bold and boastful.”
For years, ISWAP imposed taxes on Mafa, several residents said in interviews. And for years, its members passed through on their way to other towns and neighboring Niger. They spent freely in local markets.
The situation changed earlier this year. Civilians in northeastern Nigeria have in recent years formed vigilante groups to fight Boko Haram. Mafa’s vigilantes began killing the fighters who passed through.
“The vigilantes were making a fortune, because the Boko Haram members move around with huge amounts of money on them,” said Magaji Musa, a villager staying in a nearby town who lost his father-in-law in Sunday’s attack.
But then ISWAP fighters came to the village and issued a warning, Mr. Kanembu said. Immediately, the villagers fled to Babban Gida, where they were allowed to stay in a school compound.
Two weeks later, Mr. Kanembu said, a powerful local official, Baba Umar Zubairu, sent emissaries to instruct them to go back. In recent years, the Nigerian government has been closing camps, forcing displaced people home, in order to create the impression that the situation is normalizing, aid workers and rights groups say.
Mr. Zubairu denied ordering villagers to return, and said that those who returned did so of their own volition.
“Most of the people were not happy with the decision and were hesitant,” Mr. Kanembu said of the order to go back. But, he added, “Ninety percent of the people returned because the military operatives went to the community and combed the surrounding areas to ensure safety.”
The attack came less than a month later.
