Dozens Dead After Twin Blasts In Nigerian City of Jos
MANN: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. This is Connect the World. I'm Jonathan Mann in for Becky Anderson. Thanks for joining us once again. Boko Haram is stepping up its campaign of fear in northern Nigeria. Local residents say the group targeted two villages near Chibok this week killing at least 30 people and burning homes to the ground. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday double bombing in the central Nigerian city of Jos. An emergency official says 118 people were killed. A local official puts the death toll at 4. The spike in attacks by the extremist group has made life difficult and dangerous for Nigeria's Muslim community. Now, though, it is publicly condemning Boko Haram and its leader. Zain Asher reports from the Nigerian capital Abuja.</s>ZAIN ASHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: An afternoon call to prayer. Nigeria's Muslims flock from all over Abuja to kneel before before god at the country's national mosque. Some stay for hours reciting prayers under their breath, others come for quiet reflection. But in the past month, there has been something heavy weighing on their hearts.</s>MOHAMMAD SANUSI, WORSHIPPER: We are just asking them to release the girls because the girls have not offended anybody.</s>ASHER: This is the man Nigerian Muslims here are desperate to distance themselves from: Abubakar Shekau, a man who relishes violence, delights in mayhem and is wrecking havoc in northern Nigeria.</s>SHEIKH MUSA MOHAMMAD, CHIEF IMAM: Anything to do with killing people is not Islam.</s>ASHER: Not everyone here has seen the video showing more than 100 girls being forced to recite the Holy Koran, but those who have share this.</s>MOHAMMAD: In Islam, nobody should be forced to accept Islam.</s>ASHER: As we were filming here, word filtered in of another deadly bombing in the city of Jos, an area that has seen violence between Muslim and Christians for many years. But it's not just Christians who are under attack by Boko Haram, Muslims are also prime targets. In the past five years, a handful of prominent Muslim clerics have been brutally murdered for speaking out against the group.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are killing Christians, they are killing Muslims. They are killing everybody that comes come across them.</s>ASHER: The many Muslims here are no longer afraid to condemn them, even though they say Boko Haram members might be living amongst them in their communities and might even be praying alongside them at their mosques. Zain Asher, CNN, Abuja, Nigeria.</s>MANN: For more on the security challenges and threats of Boko Haram, we're joined now by Sajjan Gohel, director for international security at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London-based Think Tank. Thank so much for being with us once again. We've talked about terrorism in many parts of the world, but let me ask you about what we're seeing in Nigeria, because I wonder if we're seeing more of the violent life of a perennially troubled country, or if this is some kind of turning point.</s>SAJJAN GOHEL, ASIA-PACIFIC FOUNDATION: It's an important point that you bring up, Jonathan. Certainly, Nigeria has had a number of problems in the past. It's a country rife with ethnic, sectarian, religious problems - - Christians in the south, but the Igbo and the Yoruba in the north. You have the hausa and fulani. But what is now beginning to emerge is the fact that you have a group like Boko Haram that is ideologically affiliating itself with al Qaeda. The group's name itself in hausa means western education is a sin. But also what's important is that the tactically their attacks are resembling what al Qaeda has been trying to carry out in the past, which is multiple coordinated attacks like we've seen in Jos, hostage taking. So this is an outfit that is beginning to create new problems and ramifications throughout the country.</s>MANN: I want to ask you, though, about the group -- about the individuals in the group, because there are well informed Nigerians who say these are thugs masquerading as Muslims. Really what they're after is chaos and women. And they're really not much more than that. Are they better trained than the kind of insurgents Nigeria has faced before? Are they better supported? Are they better armed?</s>GOHEL: The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, he's an individual who just like bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri and Anwar al Awlawki is very skilled at producing media videos, using the oxygen of publicity to purport his propaganda, spread his doctrine. They may not necessarily have fighters who have trained and fought in the Afghan jihad or in Syria. They're mostly local. But nevertheless, they're causing enormous problems by targeting the Nigerian military, targeting churches. They're even going after Muslims who they feel are not true representatives of the Islamic faith.</s>MANN: I wan to jump in one thought you made -- you passed over very quickly, because it seems to be a crucial point that we're seeing in the news now. They have been mostly local. They have been confined to the northeast of the country. But now this terrible attack in Jos, and it's not the only place outside of their more familiar battleground areas that they have managed to attack. It would seem that they're able to at least spread their terror. What should be make of that?</s>GOHEL: They are spreading. In fact, the group has been carrying out attacks in Nigeria for many years, perhaps the only time they gained international attention initially was when they carried out the attack on the UN building in Abuja, the capital back in August 2011. More recently, of course, the Nigerian schoolgirls taken from Chibok. So this is a group that is spreading its wings. It is becoming more bold in its type of operations. And certainly you have to remember all groups start off small. They start off local. Then they become regional and then they become transnational. This is how it always begins. And this is the problem and the concern. They are a group that...</s>MANN: Who is helping them do that? Who is backing them? Who is supplying them? Who is giving them refuge so that they can train?</s>GOHEL: The group like Boko Haram, in the past they have used their -- the funding from criminal enterprises, hostage taking -- ransoms have been paid on a number of occasions. They're also operating in effectively like a small state within a state, especially in places like Borno. Maidogoori (ph), which is regional capital of Borno state, has become one of the main ideological centers and hubs for them.</s>MANN: You're anticipating my last question here, which is what happened to the state of Nigeria? Why have the authorities -- why is the Abuja government been unable to do more to stop this slow and obvious spread?</s>GOHEL: Ever since the last Nigerian military ruler, General Abacha died, the country has developed a semblance of democracy, it has opened up. But there are a lot of challenges politically, socially, economically the country has been unstable. That also feeds into the counterterrorism apparatus. In many ways best way to describe Nigeria is it's an organized chaos. One doesn't necessarily know how it functions, but it somehow manages to muddle through. And unless western support is given to the Nigerian authorities, this is a problem that will spread just -- not just within Nigeria, but it'll go beyond the confines of the country. So this is a group that we'll have to watch. And not just Boko Haram, but it's splinter outfits like Ansaru, which have also become very deadly in abducting westerners and executing them. So we need to see the problems in Nigeria are not just local, they are going to be transnational.</s>MANN: Sjjan Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, thanks so much for talking with us once again.</s>GOHEL: Pleasure.</s>MANN: Meanwhile, another battle being fought in Nigeria, and not against Islamic insurgents but on the cultural front. Biyi Bandele is the director of the acclaimed movie Half of a Yellow Sun, it's story is built around his country's civil war, the Biafran War. More than a million people died between 1967 and 1970. But (inaudible) wonders if his film hasn't received a license in Nigeria, because it could provoke tribal violence at the very time the country is addressing Boko Haram. Read what else he has to say about his film being effectively banned by going to CNN.com/international. Live from CNN Center, this is Connect the World. Young Iranians under arrest for a video the government calls obscene. They simply called it Happy. More on that later. And next, how one African startup is changing the way schools and parents communicate with smartphones.