A supposed spokesperson for the radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram on Monday night threatened that the group would soon launch attacks on mobile telephone companies in Nigeria.
In a phone conference with journalists in Maiduguri, the alleged spokesperson, who identified himself as Abul Qaqa, said that the sect would “soon launch attacks” on mobile phone operators and the regulator of the telecommunications sector, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Mr. Qaqa accused the telecoms companies of complicity with security agents in bugging the phones of sect members to track them. “We have realised that the mobile phone operators and the NCC have been assisting security agencies in tracking and arresting our members by bugging their lines and enabling the security agents to locate the position of our members,” he said.
“It was with the connivance with the mobile phone companies operating in Nigeria and the NCC that the security agents were able to locate Abu Dardaa and Kabiru Sokoto and arrest them,” Mr. Qaqa, who spoke in Hausa during the conference call, said.
The State Security Service (SSS), earlier in the year arrested Abul Qaqa, but the sect members rejected that claim, saying another senior member of the group, Abu Dardaa, was the one in custody. The secret police had also re-arrested Kabiru Sokoto-the alleged mastermind of the Christmas day bombing of a Church in Madalla, near Abuja, four weeks after his escape from police custody.
Nigeria has five major mobile phone operators with a total subscriber base of about 80million. The telecoms companies have recorded massive success in the Nigerian economy since the sector was privatized. They have recently come under similar threats from militants from the Niger-Delta and now the Boko Haram sect.
