For Abu Qaqa, had he known that the care for his wife would lead to his death, the decision to head back to Kano last Monday may have been shelved.
Information pieced together from the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, headquarters of the Department of State Service, DSS, Aso Rock Presidential Villa, also in Abuja, and Kano, suggest that Abu Qaqa likely took off from Gombe State.
Once information filtered in early that the group’s spokesman had been killed, the mood inside Aso Rock Presidential Villa was one of ecstasy.
Qaqa, who had been elusive from the security agents, headed for Kano from Gombe with the intention of getting a “needed medical help for the wife”, a very dependable security source volunteered.
Unknown to Qaqa – just like most of the Boko Haram senior commanders – his movement was always being tracked. Mind you, earlier in the year when the DSS made some strategic arrests of some senior members of the sect, it was revealed that some super high-tech tracking devices purchased by the agency had made the tracking and arrests of some of the alleged terror suspects possible.
It was these same devices – even more sophisticated ones recently acquired – that aided the Department in last week’s successful operation. Qaqa, his wife and children, along with some members of the sect, proceeded from Gombe to Kano, through Jigawa.
The Boko Haram’s spokesman’s wife needed medical attention and he believed that it was only in Kano that he could get the best of medical attention.
All attempts by Sunday Vanguard to ascertain the exact form of medical attention that Qaqa’s wife needed, and for which he had to make the long distance movement from Gombe to Kano, proved abortive. And because the JTF operatives were tracking him, they knew exactly where to lay ambush. At Mariri, on the outskirts of Kano, the JTF operatives waited patiently.
Relying on the tracking signals, they sighted the vehicle in which Qaqa and his family were traveling and opened fire. It was a risky and daring operation. Some other reports made claims which suggested that Qaqa was not the only adult male in the vehicle; that there were at least two other men who were said to be bodyguards.
The operatives, it was revealed, carefully evacuated the woman and the children in the car, while at the same time being mindful of any possibility of a suicide bombing attempt.
“The operatives were very careful in taking possession of the woman and the children because she may have been wearing a suicide vest”, a source said.
The woman was discovered to be Qaqa’s wife. And whereas she reportedly claimed that she was merely being escorted to Kano, “it was later established that the man killed in the vehicle was the husband and the trace equally established that he was our man”, the source disclosed. This happened last Monday morning.