USAfricaonline.com, CLASSmagazine, and USAfrica multimedia networks, Houston. Follow USAfrica at Facebook.com/USAfricaChido , Facebook.com/USAfrica247 and Twitter.com/Chido247
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday blamed “local political networks” for the killings of dozens of people in two attacks in the coastal region that have been claimed by Somalia’s Shabab militants.
“The attack in Lamu was well-planned, orchestrated and politically-motivated ethnic violence against a Kenyan community with the intention of profiling and evicting them for political reasons,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
“This therefore was not an Al-Shabab attack. Evidence indicates that local political networks were involved in the planning and execution of a heinous crime,” he said.
“This also played into the opportunist network of other criminal gangs,” he added, without identifying the local groups he said were responsible.
The president also said that intelligence on the Mpeketoni attack had been made available to local security officers but that “unfortunately, the officers did not act.”
“Accordingly, all concerned officers have been suspended and will be charged immediately in a court of law,” he added.
His comments came even though the Shabab said they were responsible for Sunday night’s attack on the town of Mpeketoni, in which around 50 people were killed, and Monday night’s attack on a nearby village that left 15 dead.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group said the attacks were further retaliation for Kenya’s military presence in Somalia as well as the Kenyan government’s “brutal oppression” of Muslims.
“It was our commandos who were taking care of things over the last two days in the Lamu area, and they will continue to do so,” a Shabab official told AFP by telephone after Kenyatta’s speech.
“We are fighting there because Kenyan troops are in our country and occupying parts if our nation.”
The Shabab had also claimed responsibility for last September’s siege of the Westgate shopping mall in the capital Nairobi, in which 67 people were killed. ref: AFP
USAfrica MEDIAWATCH
On Nigeria’s Boko Haram, New York Times Nick Kristof misanalysis on CNN Fareed Zakaria’s GPS. By Chido Nwangwu
Special commentary to USAfricaonline.com, CLASSmagazine, and USAfrica multimedia networks, Houston. Follow Twitter.com/Chido247, Facebook.com/USAfricaChido
A few minutes ago, today May 11, 2014, on #CNN@FareedZakaria, the continuation of fanciful misanalyses and non-factual views about the root causes and “explanation” for the unrelenting mayhem unleashed by the violent Islamic sect #BokoHaram in#Nigeria were repeated by the award-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof and Eliza Griswold, author of the new book The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.
Kristof especially, wrongly, argues that Boko Haram and similar groups are driven by economic disparity in Nigeria. not true in fact and logic.
Griswold says with a certain antiseptic disdain that Boko Haram is a “mess.” Simply a mess? After killing at least 2,000 Nigerians within 5 years.
Griswold adds it is more a struggle between moderate and extreme Muslims…. Seriously? I disagree.
First, I know that targeting and slaughtering and bombing, primarily, christians and demanding they leave the mainly Islamic northern region of Nigeria and visiting “unholy” fire and thunder on others they consider “Children of a lesser God” is mechanized, religio-political bigotry. It is not economic; it is not moderates versus extremists.
Second, as a child survivor of the 1967-1970 Nigeria-Biafra war, I know the familiar consequences of mis-analyzing and understating the militarized, offensive moves of bigots, especially armed and well-funded groups such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram.
I will close this brief response, for now; and available to debate the Boko Haram and Nigeria’s religio-political crises, here and elsewhere. •Dr. Chido Nwangwu, moderator of the Achebe Colloquium (Governance, Security, and Peace in Africa) December 7-8, 2012 at Brown University in Rhode Island and former adviser on Africa business/issues to the Mayor of Houston, is the Founder & Publisher of Houston-based USAfrica multimedia networks since 1992, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com; CLASSmagazine, AchebeBooks.com, the USAfrica-powered e-groups of AfricanChristians, Nigeria360 and the largest pictorial events megasite on the African diaspora www.PhotoWorks.TV . He was recently profiled by the CNN International for his pioneering works on multimedia/news/public policy projects for Africans and Americans. http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/07/29/mpa.african.media.bk.a.cnn e-mail: Chido247@Gmail.com wireless 1-832-45-CHIDO (24436).
Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity. By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfrica, USAfricaonline.com and the Nigeria360 e-group. https://usafricaonline.com/2011/12/17/nigeria-federal-republic-of-insecurity-by-chido-nwangwu/
IF any of the Nigerian President’s 100 advisers has the polite courage for the extraordinary task of reminding His Excellency of his foremost, sworn, constitutional obligation to the national interest about security and safety of Nigerians and all who sojourn in Nigeria, please whisper clearly to Mr. President that I said, respectfully: Nigerians, at home and abroad, are still concerned and afraid for living in what I call Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity. FULL text of commentary, exclusively, at USAfricaonline.com https://usafricaonline.com/2011/12/17/nigeria-federal-republic-of-insecurity-by-chido-nwangwu/
