From Timothy Olanrewaju Maiduguri
Theatre Commander of the counter-insurgency operation in the North East, Operation Hadin Kai, Maj Gen. Christopher Musa, said over 60,000 combatant and non combatant Boko Haram have surrendered to the government in the last one year.
Gen. Musa made the disclosure to Daily Sun at the weekend in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital. He said the wave of surrendering of Boko Haram insurgents from their enclaves in the central part of Borno, which started July 2021, has led to over 60,000 insurgents given up terror acts.
“Over 60,000 insurgents have surrendered. These include both combatants and non combatants. There are about 12,000 men among them. The rest are women and children,” he disclosed.
He urged Nigerians to appreciate the surrender as a non kinetic approach to ending the violence in the northeast. He said the manner at which Boko Haram and its splinter group, ISWAP, keep producing children through either their wives or women abducted and forced into marriage shows the insurgents are building up a generation of terrorists for nearer future.
“What they are trying to do is to produce a generation of terrorists. When a woman puts to bed, she takes it again four months later. They have almost 30,000 children. You can see what they are building up,” he said.He explained the implication of having about 30,000 children out of bush and Boko Haram camps was huge. He said such surrendering has saved the nation of future terrorists who would have grown up to know and believe violence or terrorism is normal.
“It is dangerous because when they grow up there in the bush, they will believe terrorism is normal and, thus, is quite dangerous to the nation,” he said.
He, however, maintained the military troops would continue to keep the heat on the terrorists remaining in the bush. He said the Operation Hadin Kai troops will keep pushing the insurgents hard while Operation Lake Sanity of the multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) will also dominate the border areas where the insurgents often flee to after much heat from the north east soil.
The commander lauded the vision and support of the Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Farouk Yahaya.
He said his deep understanding of the counter-insurgency operation in the region, as a former commander, contributed to the troops’ successes against terrorism.
The violence in the northeast took a dramatic turn July 2021, as about 3,00 insurgents came out of the bush to surrender. They are kept at some facilities in Maiduguri, the state capital.
