BEVERLY HILLS, CA, October 27, (THEWILL) – Life in Boko Haram forest camps is nasty and hellish with many of the insurgents forced to stay in perpetual fear in the camps for fear of being killed if they flee, a 22-year-old arrested member of the sect has confessed.
“Sometimes when we are going for attacks I always feel like hiding,” he recalled , even as he disclosed that “we have professionals among us, we have doctors and mechanics that attend to the injured and vehicles, and other pressing needs.”
He also said they have a lot of food and medical provisions in their stores, disclosing that during “our raids, we steal food and medicine and other needs which we keep in our stores.”
Recounting his ordeal in Maiduguri at the weekend after he was arrested, the young Boko Haram member explained how he was co-opted into the terrorist group by his brother who always came home with a gun to hide at their residence.
Advising the youths to stay clear from the group, he said his brother, who has since been killed in one of the deadly attacks launched by the sect, told him that he had a choice to either join the sect or get killed since he has known some of their secrets.
He said his brother also told him that either way he would be killed if he did not join the sect as he was at the mercy of the Boko Haram or the soldiers that may come home looking for him.
Explaining how he was eventually captured, he said:
“We launched an attack in Damboa and I was shot and my colleagues who thought that I was killed left me behind but later when I regained consciousness, I crawled to the road.
“I was picked up by the police later and I told them I was willing to volunteer information.
I was asked by a senior police officer how I got recruited into the group which I told him, he later handed me over to the Army where I was kept since.”
He disclosed that once you a member is initiated into the group, it is always difficult to denounce membership, saying “we are counted after every week or two to know who might have left and any of us found missing will be looked for and if he is found to have fled would be slaughtered.”
He stated that he had to flee Lagos at a point but later returned and he was spared after a long drawn argument.
He called on the Federal Government to grant him amnesty, saying he would like to be a soldier fighting on the side of the nation.
Maintaining that now he has discovered that there is nothing religious in their fight against the Federal Government, he said: “I now see it as banditry but others that are still there see it as jihad, working for God,” stressing that the war of the sect is now against everybody and not restricted to the Army or Police as it used to be in the past.
Explaining that because the society has castigated them and pursued them from Maiduguri, particularly, they have chosen to take the battle to the Civilian JTF and every residents of Maiduguri, saying this was responsible for the various highway attacks by the insurgents.
However, the acting Brigade Commander of 21 Armoured Brigade, Maiduguri, Col. Ibrahim Yusuf, said the Federal Government has always shown that it was willing to end the crisis as soon as possible and was still willing to give amnesty to any of the sect members who surrendered to embrace peace.
“Once you come out, we will treat you as a captured member, we all know the intention of government to see an end to this crisis,” he added.
