Islamist Group Claims Responsibility for Cell Phone Tower Attacks in Nigeria

An unusual wave of attacks has been happening in northern Nigeria.

More than 30 cell phone towers have been targeted.

Nigeria has very few functioning landlines, so cell phones provide a key communications link.

Friday, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for attacking the towers.

The group is trying to create a hard-line Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

It previously bombed government offices, schools and other public buildings in the region.

The BBC’s Sam Olukoya tells anchor Lisa Mullins cell phone operators are threatening to pull out of the region.

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Lisa Mullins: An unusual wave of attacks has been happening in northern Nigeria. More than 30 cellphone towers have been targeted. Nigeria has very few functioning landlines so cellphones provide the key communications link. Today the militant Islamic group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for attacking the towers. The group is trying to create a hard-line Islamic state in northern Nigeria. Sam Olukoya reports for the BBC from Lagos, Nigeria. He tells us the Boko Haram has been responsible for a wide variety of attacks in the region.

Sam Olukoya: They’ve attacked quite a number of infrastructures in the past. They’ve attacked the UN building in Abuja. They’ve attacked churches, they’ve attacked schools and it seems that their next target is now cellphone towers. A number of these across northern Nigeria, in different towns in northern Nigeria, were attacked between Wednesday and Thursday.

Mullins: How are they going about attacking these towers?

Olukoya: It has taken the same pattern they’ve used for the attacks, using explosives to blow up the installations. Many of the installations were blown up by explosives.

Mullins: No one can detect when they’re setting the explosives?

Olukoya: The fact is that you have a near state of anarchy in northern Nigeria, even though you have a massive deployment of troops in the area. But you have so many things to protect. Cellphone towers become some of the least priorities, at least for now. But given what has happened, it means they will have more infrastructures to protect. One of the key problems they will have is that some of these infrastructures are located in remote areas, so they are soft targets for them to attack. The fact remains that the impact is going to be very major. Nigeria doesn’t have functioning landlines, so if the country relies on cellphones and somebody’s attacking these cellphones, then that presents an attack virtually at the heart of the economy of the areas concerned.

Mullins: Is that part of the aim of the perpetrators? That they are trying to create more of a state of anarchy that you said already exists? They’re trying to do this by downing the cellphone towers? Or do they see this as kind of protecting themselves? If they’re using cells, they are more easily found.

Olukoya: What they’re essentially doing is picking on other targets that to some extent have no bearing with what they are doing. I mean, the media houses that have been bombed, they have no bearing. Essentially, the objective will be that they want to create anarchy. They want to inflict so much damage on the economy so as to attract as much attention to themselves as possible.

Mullins: If the cellphones, through the cellphone towers, are such a critical point of communication for Nigerians because there aren’t that many landlines, is there any kind of immediate repair that can be done to see that people are able to stay in touch? Or is it right now not a priority or too much to keep up with?

Olukoya: In fact, the telephone companies are saying that if these attacks continue, they will have to pull out of the area. I was reading an analysis today and somebody said that each of these cellphone towers cost about $250,000 to put in place. We’re talking of about 30 already destroyed. If you have such expensive installations with very little protection, you cannot allow somebody to go and destroy them. So it will be logical that those you cannot protect, you close them down and move out of the area. The cellphone operators have said clearly that if these attacks continue, if the government is unable to protect them, then they will move out of the area.

Mullins: Is there a chance that this could derail the entire cellphone system within Nigeria?

Olukoya: Yes, I think so. I mean, if you look back and realize that even police stations, even military barracks, have been attacked by the Islamists, Protecting cellphone towers which are spread all over the place, is quite a difficult thing to do. I think that the Boko Haram sect has realized that this is something they can easily do. Not just stopping the military from using the cellphones to track their activities, but at the same time sufficiently crippling the economy of northern Nigeria.

Mullins: OK, thank you. Speaking to us from Lagos, Nigeria, the BBC’s Sam Olukoya. Thank you.

Olukoya: Thank you very much.

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