The Bolga Bomber
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 14/Jul/2011 09:07, 34 days ago
The‘Launch of Ramadan’ event is to be held, so the signboard proudly displays in bold lettering at the main roundabout in Bolga, at the Catholic Social Centre. It is a sign of the religious tolerance to be found here. Which makes it all the more surprising to discover that one of the July 2005 London bombers is from Bolga.Most big towns and cities in Ghana and across west Africa have areas called‘Zongos’. Bolga Zongo is a big area that straddles the main road between the roundabout and the traffic lights. There’s a decent late-night chop bar I occasionally go to in that area but there are no drinking spots to be found - just a number of houses, Islamic schools and mosques. Nearby, a large central mosque is under construction - although they don’t appear to be working very quickly.When the colonial powers of France and Britain first moved inland from the coastal fortresses at the end of the nineteenth century, they found one of West Africa’s biggest and most powerful empires, the Sokoto Caliphate, centred around Kano in what is now northern Nigeria. The empire stretched from modern-day Cameroon, across northern Nigeria and Niger and into Burkina Faso and northern Benin, Togo and Ghana. The lingua franca of this empire, Hausa, is still spoken widely across this huge area. The evening news on GTV (Ghana TV) is read in English and Hausa. Most people in Bolga have a working knowledge of Hausa. There are Hausa songs, books and films that link the cultures and peoples of this great former empire.The Sokoto Caliphate in its heyday was a militantly imperialist Islamic empire - a characteristic that still unites the Hausa speaking people. The Caliphate was founded in 1809 by Shaihu Usman dan Fodio in a jihad against the greed and abuse of power by the nominally Muslim city-state rulers at the time - who Dan Fodio derided as having polluted Islam with traditional African beliefs and rituals. Dan Fodio established a state based on puritanical Sharia law. Interestingly, he encouraged literacy for women. Several of his daughters became scholars. The empire lasted less than a hundred years and the spoils were divided in a 1903 treaty between the French and British.Almost everyone living in Bolga Zongo are not originally from Bolga, where the heritage is traditionalist / Catholic, but are from elsewhere in the former Sokoto Caliphate. With Ghana currently being West Africa’s most flourishing, democratic, peaceful and prosperous state, it is not surprising that people are settling in Bolga Zongo from such war-torn and famine-ridden places as Niger, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. Many of these individuals are well educated, moneyed and entrepreneurial. Being Muslim and tee-total, they rarely lose themselves to boozing and smoking in the way many locals do. Their links with family members in other parts of West Africa help the community barter and trade. Many Muslims in Bolga are quite privileged.Sumaila Ishmael Abubakar was one such privileged individual. Sumaila was born and raised in Bolga Zongo, working hard at various Islamic and English schools before attending one of the best state senior high schools in the region - Navrongo Secondary School. He graduated and lived in Tema for several years before travelling on false papers to London in 2003.
Arriving alone, illegal and poor, Sumaila found comradeship, support and voluntary work through mosques - particularly a mosque in Finchley that adopted Sumaila onto their football team.Sadly, Sumaila fell in with the wrong crowd. Led by an Eritrean called Muktar Said Ibrahim, Sumaila was one of the five people convicted for the attempted bombing of London on 21st July 2005, just two weeks after the July 7th bombs that killed 52 people including a Ghanaian nurse (who was working as a cleaner). Although he claims to have been coerced into doing it, Sulamia bought nearly£600 of hydrogen peroxide, telling the supplier that he needed it to strip wallpaper. Sulamia’s flat was described as a “bomb factory”. The gang mixed the peroxide with chapatti flour and packed it into plastic containers with bolts and washers taped to the outside to act as shrapnel. Concealed in rucksacks, the gang tried to detonate their suicide bombs simultaneously in different places across London. Luckily for Londoners, their chemistry wasn’t quite good enough and the mixture simply bubbled out of the rucksacks in a horrible mess and the gang members legged it.Sumalia was the only member of the gang that chickened out. He dumped his bag in a park before running off. Shortly afterwards, he phoned his family in Bolga who encouraged him to go to the police.Sumalia, who was referred to by his illegally adopted name Asiedu Manfo throughout the trial, was sentenced to 33 years imprisonment for conspiracy to cause explosions. He cut a deal with the authorities - pleading guilty to the lesser charge whilst indicting his friends for conspiracy to murder and damning them to at least 40 years imprisonment.When interviewed in Bolga in late 2007, Sumaila’s father, Alhaji Abubakar Kong Kolog, could not believe that his son was involved. “I still do not believe that Sumaila was convicted of such a crime, when our religion forbids the act of taking people's lives.” Neighbours described Sumaila as a “disciplined chap who was not only hardworking but also kind and loved people irrespective of their ethnic background”.Bolga is full of diligent, disciplined and kind young people.