Islamic fundamentalist group, Boko Haram has started recruiting young, mostly jobless people, even from the South West area in the group’s violent campaign to establish an Islamic State in a plural country, Iroyin Oodua reports.
IrohinO’odua said it was reliably informed by a retired top State Security Service, (SSS) operative that the security operatives were shocked to discover that “many young Yoruba people are fighting on the side of the extremist group.”
It was unclear the motivation of the young people finding their way into fighting on behalf of the terrorist group given the cultural differences of the Yoruba and the Islamic North. The top operative who seeks anonymity said the Yoruba people in the Boko Haram army are three sets of people: those whose generations were born and bred in the North and have become ‘Islamised’, the second group are young and hopeless Yoruba people driven by the harsh economic realities at the home front and see joining Boko Haram as a means of temporary livelihood. The third group are young Yoruba people conscripted in the North, indoctrinated and forced to join Boko Haram. It is estimated that 6 million Yoruba people live in the North, while the relationship between the Yoruba and the Hausa-Fulani/Kanuri which form the bulk of the Boko Haram army are sometimes fluid around the fringe states of Kogi, Kwara and Niger state where both Yoruba and Fulani nationalities have lived for centuries.
“The fighters are being paid by Boko Haram. They are recruited, indoctrinated and trained by the Boko Haram and after that, they are enlisted to fight on the side of the Islamic group. Many of them are currently in Potiskum, Sambisa”, he told our correspondent. He said that this does not however present any strand of Yoruba support for the Boko Haram, saying that ‘what we see is an abnormal, individual quest for survival.”
According to him, each fighter is paid an average of 1000 dollars in one month and a bit higher when any fighter goes to the battle front.
An official of the Oodua Peoples Congress, (OPC), Bade Olowokere told Irohin Oodua that his group is aware that some of its members are being recruited by Boko Haram against the wish of the OPC leadership.
He said “We were preparing these young people for the defense of Yoruba land during the Gen Sani Abacha onslaught on the Yoruba people. Suddenly Abacha died and a Yoruba man became the President. Many of these young people however became disillusioned when they noticed that their conditions remain as bad as it used to be. They are hungry, no jobs and the political class isolates them. They see them as mercenaries to be avoided. There were no programmes of re-integration. No programme of re-education. They only use them for elections and then dump them. So, these young people are seething with anger and they will jump at any offer that can meet their immediate economic needs.” He said the great danger is ‘what will happen in Yorubaland when these extermist elements return home.”
According to Iroyin Oodua, he said that since the Boko Haram attacks in the North, many Yoruba people have been killed and made homeless, but that non of the state government has done anything to address their situation. “Not even a courtesy call or solidarity visits by the Yoruba leaders, not even a statement of support from any of the leaders, so they feel frustrated and they are vulnerable to any group that may wish to use them,” Olowokere said.
Source: Iroyin Oodua.