The 10-year-old girl, Hadiza Musa – who was arrested along with her 18-year-old sister, Zainab Musa – had a suicide bomber’s explosives belt strapped to her chest. According to Mr. Mike Omeri, Nigerian government’s spokesman on terrorist activities, the girls were being driven by a man in his 20s late in the evening in Funtua town, west of Kano, when they were stopped at a police roadblock and ordered out of their Honda hatchback.
“They were asked to alight but when they got down, officers saw that the youngest one was strapped with explosives; it was an IED on a vest she was wearing. The girl did not offer resistance and she was stopped and her vest was demobilised. We have not yet forensically investigated it, but it was prepared and would have caused havoc. The older girl and the man tried to escape but they were cut off by ordinary citizens and arrested,” the spokesman stated.

Last month’s serial female bombers’ attacks in Kano State during the national holiday to mark Muslim’s Sallah celebration, announced Boko Haram’s new tactics to a bewildered nation. Two female suicide bombers blew themselves up at a trade show and a petrol station in Kano, killing one other person and injuring at least six others, while another female suicide bomber killed herself but no one else while trying to target police officers.
“We wish to assure Nigerians that the government is putting all efforts and resources into countering the violent insurgency by Boko Haram,” said Omeri while condemning the new terror trend.

“It is reprehensible that the terrorists are now using little girls that they have indoctrinated, or lured, or tricked and forced into being involved in something they have no reason in their mind to understand.”
At the last count, four female suicide bombers have been reported to have caused the murder of scores of people in Kano during the last week of July.

Observers see the new trend of terror in Nigeria as confusing, noting that northern Nigerian women are some of the most sheltered in the world. One observer pointed out that even the poorest northern Nigerian parents give up everything to protect their female children. “While male kids from poor homes can be thrown to the streets, often under the pretext of acquisition of Islamic education, to fend for themselves, female children, for the most part, are often featherbedded.”

In the latest tactical offensive, hijab-wearing women, laced with improvised explosive belts, are beginning to waste lives in these attacks. The deadly tactic sends a hail of shrapnel piercing through the flesh and breaking the bones of unsuspecting bystanders as the female suicide bombers detonate the IEDs strapped around their bodies.
During the Kano attacks, a hijab-clad female suicide bomber killed three people and herself with her belt device at an NNPC petrol station, and injured eight others. Hours later, another female attacker targeted the city’s Trade Fair Complex, wounding six bystanders, according to the police. In all, there were four bomb attacks by female terrorists in the space of four days. In June, a female suicide bomber killed a soldier in front of the 301 Battalion of the Nigerian Army, Gombe, capital of Gombe State.