The threat posed by Boko Haram is brought home by deadly attacks in a Nigerian community

At his friend’s wedding on Saturday, Adamu Buba, a Nigerian, noticed a woman wearing a ripped hijab and asked two of his colleagues to serve her food. Shortly after, he was snapping pictures of the bride and groom when he heard a huge explosion that sent him flying.

The hijab-wearing woman killed herself and ten other people when explosives strapped to her back exploded. Buba was wounded and confused as she lay.

The 34-year-old Buba observed, “All I could see were dead bodies on the ground and body parts all around,” from a hospital bed in Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state.

Both the bride and the husband made it through.

This was the first of four alleged female suicide bombs in the last week that also targeted a hospital, a security checkpoint, and a funeral for the deceased. According to police, these bombs in Gwoza town, Borno, the epicenter of an Islamist insurgency, may have killed up to 32 people.

Nobody made a blame allegation.

However, the military claimed this demonstrated the extent to which Boko Haram would go in order to harm civilians and security targets. Residents of Gwoza placed the blame on the group.

Locals perceived the assaults as retaliation for their cooperation with law enforcement in suppressing the rebels. They added that this can be seen as a warning to the town’s Boko Haram defectors that their safety was in jeopardy if they left the group.

A friend of the groom named Abubakar Audu from Maiduguri said, “We have always been scared because the presence of ex-fighters in our community is a big threat to our lives.”

The highly publicized wedding on Saturday was an ideal target because it attracted notable individuals, including local officials.

The last time Boko Haram employed female suicide bombers was in 2020.

According to Army spokesman Major General Edward Buba, the attacks were carried out in fear and were intended “to project an image of strength to cover their (Boko Haram) weakness and decline”.

According to Malik Samuel, a researcher from Nigeria at the Institute of Security Studies in Abuja, Boko Haram has been under pressure from the military and its affiliate, Islamic State West Africa Province, with which it is at war for territory.

“These problems have significantly impacted (its) capacity to launch extensive attacks. Because suicide bombing appeared to be a thing of the past, using them to sow mayhem was therefore a cunning and clever tactic, according to Samuel.