NGTECHSOLUTION

They have been surrendering in droves of late. And their stories of recruitment and surrender have been as outlandish as they are intriguing.

Many of them narrated that the heat from the firepower of the military was becoming unbearable.

They also spoke about the promises that were made that encouraged them to join terrorist groups only to find at the end that they were empty promises.

Their tales were laden with regrets. These were former fighters of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, and its Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) affiliates operating in the North East of Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin bordering Nigeria with Chad and Niger.

The former fighters narrated how military offensive on their former hideouts and camps had been so much so that divisions not only broke out among their erstwhile commanders, many of them were also eager to surrender while their families, especially women and children whom they had all along used as human shields in Sambisa forest and other hideouts and camps, were now being dumped and abandoned, to enable them escape. They cited the dumping of 33 women and 39 children, totalling 72, at Ngala town, near Sambisa forest as an example.

The military corroborated their story, citing the killing of late 19 Amir’s or commanders of the BHT/ISWAP terrorist groups by troops, compared to a total of 18 Amir’s killed between January and March 2020.

Indeed, the number of ISWAP fighters surrendering has recently, according to the military, increased by the day with 11 of them throwing in the towel on May 11, 2020 in Adamawa State.