Following the Boko Haram onslaught which left over 30 stranded travellers dead and over 18 vehicles burnt in Auno, a village 24 km from Maiduguri, the House of Representatives on Wednesday asked that the tragedy be investigated.
The House also asked the president to declare a state of emergency on security and tasked its committee on defence to investigate the cause of the low morale among troops in the North-east.
Auno killings, as media reports now call it, occurred last Sunday when many travellers had to pass the night in Auno, after soldiers had locked the Damaturu-Maiduguri highway gates, which they lock at the curfew time, 6 p.m.
But the gates, designed to check the influx of Boko Haram insurgents at night, became the military’s major undoing last Sunday.
As charred corpses littered the scene of the massacre, so did burnt vehicles, after the marauders opened fire on the unsuspecting travellers.
The insurgents also reportedly abducted many travellers, mostly women after setting vehicles ablaze.
Legislative intervention
Dissatisfied with this, Mohammed Monguno, the House Chief Whip, moved a motion, arguing that the attack was avoidable.
He added that by abandoning the travellers to their fate on the night, the military lost guard of its responsibility to protect the citizens.
Backing him, Ahmed Jaha (APC, Borno) said, among the vehicles stranded at the checkpoint, was a tanker conveying petroleum products to Maiduguri owned by the military. He wondered why the military could detain its own truck and leave it at the mercy of insurgents.
