It was a cruel and devastating attack. A suicide bomber blew herself up in a crowded market in northern Nigeria. A safe distance away was another young female suicide bomber. She joined the crowd of people who were rushing to help the injured and detonated her own explosive device.
The Boko Haram terror chiefs who gave these duped young women their orders knew precisely what they were doing. At least 80 people died and dozens were injured in Maiduguri the capital of Borno state, which is currently the heart of the Boko Haram campaign.
In a similar outrage this week, terrorists arrived at a Borno fish market disguised as traders. But their trunks contained their weapons. They slit the throats of 48 people and left the fishing village a burning wreck.
In the face of such savagery, local residents have formed vigilante groups, who have reportedly handed out rough justice to strangers, simply because they were suspected of being Boko Haram fighters or spies sent ahead by the terrorists.
It is the police and army who ought to be protecting citizens. Unfortunately, that is precisely what they are not doing. As the respected Muslim scholar, the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar said this week, the police and army are actually part of the problem.
Poorly-paid and ill-disciplined, they flee at the first sign of trouble, only to return after an attack has taken place and erect roadblocks which they use to shake down people for bribes.
They and their behavior are, however, only a symptom of a more important and tragic challenge facing Nigeria - the poor judgement and lack of governance from the capital Abuja. Nigeria is Africa's richest and most populous country, yet its economy is a corrupt mess. Some would argue that the corrosive effect of corruption has damaged even the lines of command within the once proud and efficient military.
In the final analysis, ordinary soldiers and policemen require good leadership. Junior and middle-ranking officers in their turn need to have confidence in their senior commanders, in their ability to plan operations coherently, give clear orders and to support the solders they send to carry them out.
Time and again, in the fight against these ruthless terrorists in the north of the country, the Nigerian military has demonstrated that it appears to have lost its former qualities. President Goodluck Jonathan earlier this year fired a clutch of squabbling top commanders, but it has had no apparent effect on the ability of the military to confront Boko Haram. The terrorists, led by the clearly unstable Abubakar Shekau, have nothing to do with Islam. They are, however, using their affiliation to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State as a cover for ruthless brigandage, not dissimilar to that of the no less depraved Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda which claims it is acting in the name of Christianity.
While the LRA has had the advantage of operating in heavily-forested areas, the northeastern state of Borno has far more open spaces. Aerial intelligence coupled with a coherent strategy to block and contain the Boko Haram bandits ought not to be too big a task for a modern military. But clearly this is not the case in Nigeria. It is not that Boko Haram is winning in this awful bloodbath, but that the Nigerian state and its security forces are failing.
