At least 32 people were killed and dozens more wounded in a Nov. 17 blast at a crowded vegetable market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Yola, capital of war-torn Adamawa state. Yola was also the scene of an Oct. 24 mosque bombing that left 27 dead. These are but the latest in a relentless campaign of terror attacks by Boko Haram that has left over 1,600 dead [7] in Nigeria and neighboring Chad and Cameroon over the past four months. (Al Jazeera [8], Nov. 17) The new attack comes just as a Nigerian online activist has won acclaim in his country for calling out Facebook [9]'s double standards on which terrorist attacks warrant attention. Activst Jafaar Jafaar in a popular post noted the prodigious attention Facebook is devoting the Paris terrorist attacks [10] that have left 130 dead—with a "Safety Check" feature for residents of the city, and a campaign by users to superimpose the French tricolor over their profile pictures. Jafaar especially made note of the January attack at the town of Baga [11], in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state, in which an estimated 2,000 were killed—eliciting no such response from Facebook. (News24 [12], Nigeria, Nov. 17)
The country's anguish is deepened by growing evidence of the army's incompetence and corruption in the battle against Boko Haram, which declared its loyalty to ISIS [13] earlier this year. On the very day of the new Yola attack, Nigerian authorities ordered the arrest of the former president's national security adviser for allegedly stealing more than $2 billion earmarked to purchase weapons for the war on Boko Haram. "Thousands of needless Nigerian deaths would have been avoided" if the money had been properly spent, Femi Adesina, an adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, said in a statement. Sambo Dasuki, a key adviser to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, is accused of awarding "phantom contracts" to buy 12 helicopters, four fighter jets, and bombs and ammunition that never were supplied. Dasuki, a retired army officer who participated in every coup in Nigeria going back to the 1980s, is under house arrest. He denies the charges (AP [14], Nov. 18)
