Islamist militants kill up to 30 Nigerian soldiers in attack on base

Attack blamed on Islamic State in West Africa another blow to efforts to defeat insurgency ahead of presidential election

A Nigerian army convoy in Borno State, where up to 30 soldiers were killed by Islamists. Photograph: Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

Islamist militants have killed up to 30 soldiers in an attack on a military base in north-east Nigeria in one of the biggest attacks of its kind this year.

Security sources said on Saturday the attack on Thursday by suspected members of Islamic State in West Africa was on a base in Zari village in the north of Borno State.

In 2016 ISWA split from Boko Haram, the jihadist group that has killed more than 30,000 people in the region since 2009, when it launched an insurgency to create an Islamic caliphate.

The Zari attack highlights the challenge to secure the north-east, months ahead of a February election in which security looks set to be a campaign issue.

“The battle lasted for about two hours and our colleagues fought them, but things became bad before the fighter jets arrived. We lost about 30 of our soldiers and about 10 were wounded,” said a military source who did not want to be named.

Another source, who also did not want to be named, said 20 to 30 troops had been killed in a surprise attack. Details only emerged days later because it occurred in a remote area near the border with Niger.

The attack, in the Guzamala local government area of Borno, is the latest blow to Nigeria’s efforts to defeat insurgencies by Boko Haram and ISWA.

Earlier this week Nigerian government officials ordered thousands of displaced people to return to Guzamala, an area considered by aid agencies to be unsafe, as pressure mounts to show progress in the war against the insurgents ahead of the presidential election.

The president, Muhammadu Buhari, a former general, won the 2015 election after vowing to crush Islamist militants. He plans to seek a second term in February.

In July the fourth commander in 14 months was named to lead the fight against the militants after a number of embarrassing defeats, despite the government having said since late 2015 that the Islamists in the region had been defeated.

In mid-July 20 Nigerian soldiers went missing following a clash with militants in the Bama area of Borno. Military sources say the troops are feared dead.

Nigeria: Militant surge blamed on weather and weapons

By Rafiu Ajakaye/

Fresh high-profile losses in Nigeria’s battle with Boko Haram militants are leading to analysis of the resurgence, with some chalking it up to weapons shortfalls as well as that bugbear of armies throughout history, the weather – or in this case, the dry season.

Late Monday Nigeria lost another senior army officer in an ambush by Boko Haram militants, barely two weeks after one of the country’s most celebrated military commanders, Col. Muhammadu Abu-Ali, and five other soldiers were felled by insurgents’ bullets.

Quoting military sources on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, local media say Lt. Col. B.U. Umar, the commanding officer of the 114 army special task force battalion, was killed in an ambush by militants in the Bita area of the northeast Borno state. A few other soldiers were reported injured in the incident.

These deaths only added to the rising tally of military casualties in the region in recent months. Noticeably, there has been surge in Boko Haram activities since late September. Heavy fighting in southern and especially northern Borno, an area where analysts say Boko Haram remains strong, has led to casualties on both sides. Several soldiers were declared missing in September, followed by a series of suicide bombings in October killing dozens in Maiduguri, Borno’s capital.

Freedom Onuoha, a counterinsurgency analyst who teaches at the National Defense College Abuja, said the resurgence could be blamed on a number of factors, including the coming of the dry season. During the season, he explained, the militant group is able to move fighters and logistics more easily.

“The resurgence of Boko Haram attacks may be a product of several factors such as access to more weapons by the group, better intelligence on military strategies, and plans from their moles,” he told Anadolu Agency.

– Weapons deficit factor

Onuoha said a weapons deficit due to wear and tear or delayed procurement may also play a role in the rise of militant attacks, as may greater support from foreign fighters fleeing the conflicts in Libya, some with access to weapons.

Last week, there were reports of Washington again blocking Nigeria’s efforts to procure some military assets to prosecute the conflict. Sources at the country’s Defense Ministry told Anadolu Agency that most of the Alpha jets currently in use in the northeast are weak and urgently need replacing.

“Efforts are ongoing to purchase some A-29 Super Tucano attack helicopters but no serious headway has been made,” a source said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Defense spokespersons did not respond to Anadolu Agency’s request for comment.

Similar attempts by Nigeria to purchase military platforms during the previous Goodluck Jonathan administration were also frustrated by the United States, citing human rights abuses.

Onuoha said the army is also overstretched due to the many internal operations it is involved in. Troops are deployed in the oil-rich delta where militants have resumed bombing of critical national assets.

“However the situation of the military is made worse by a terrible deficit in critical platforms that could confer a battle space advantage, particularly aerial assets that make it easier to identify and neutralize insurgents in an environment and terrain as difficult and complex as the northeast,” he added.

– The role of poor intelligence

Nigerian security blogger Fulan Nasrullah, famed for his knowledge of the insurgency, said the claims of resurgence appear hyped because militants have always attacked far-flung villages in raids not reported by the media.

“The dry season isn’t an alibi, it’s a fact of warfare. The amount of fighting possible in the rainy season is far less than that in the dry season,” he told Anadolu Agency, corroborating Onuoha’s statement.

Nasrullah insisted, however, that claims that Boko Haram had been subdued are at variance with “credible intelligence” that the insurgents are, at best, in “conservation mode” while retaining their core attacking assets.

The analyst said army officers who tell the truth about the real state of things are often shouted down, while their superiors reportedly feed the army headquarters and top political authorities with misinformation.

“And poor intelligence makes for poor decisions,” he added, explaining why Boko Haram continues to be a serious threat in the region.

UN says 75,000 children in Nigeria risk dying in ‘months’

A young child suffering from severe malnutrition lies on a bed in the ICU ward at the In-Patient Therapeutic Feeding Centre in Maiduguri, Borno State Credit: STEFAN HEUNIS/AFP

By Agence France-Presse (The Telegraph).

The United Nations warned on Tuesday that 75,000 Nigerian children risk dying in “a few months” as hunger grips the country’s ravaged northeast in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Boko Haram jihadists have laid waste to the impoverished region since taking up arms against the government in 2009, displacing millions and disrupting farming and trade.

Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari has reclaimed territory from the Islamists but the insurgency has taken a brutal toll, with over 20,000 people dead, 2.6 million displaced from their homes, and famine taking root.

UN humanitarian coordinator Peter Lundberg said the crisis was unfolding at “high speed.””Currently our assessment is that 14 million people are identified as in need of humanitarian assistance,” by 2017, Mr Lundberg told reporters in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Out of them, 400,000 children are in critical need of assistance, while 75,000 could die “in (the) few months ahead of us,” Mr Lundberg said.

The UN hopes to target half of the 14 million people – a population bigger than Belgium – with the Nigerian government working to reach the rest.

But Mr Lundberg said that the UN did not have enough money to avert the crisis and called on international partners, the private sector and Nigerian philanthropists to “join hands” to tackle the problem.

“We need to reach out to the private sector, to the philanthropists in Nigeria,” Mr Lundberg said.

“We will ask international partners to step in because we can only solve this situation if we actually join hands.”

Maiduguri, the capital of northeast Borno state and birthplace of Boko Haram, has doubled in size to two million people as a result of people seeking refuge in camps for internally displaced people.

Despite the World Food Programme warning of “famine-like conditions”, the UN has not declared a “level three” emergency, the classification for the most severe crisis that would draw more attention and desperately needed funds to Nigeria.

“The humanitarian response hasn’t scaled up adequately to meet a growing demand for food, particularly in the more remote camps in the northeast,” Roddy Barclay, intelligence analyst at consultancy firm Africa Practice.

Nigerian vigilante and security sources told AFP in September that at least 10 people were starving to death daily in a camp for IDPs near the Borno capital.

There is also the ongoing issue of insecurity. Despite the recent military gains, Boko Haram still prowls the northeast region and stages attacks and suicide bombings.

“The Nigerian army has scored notable military successes in containing Boko Haram. But that’s not to say they have stabilised the region entirely,” Mr Barclay said.

“Movement in remote zones remains high risk and the focus remains overwhelmingly on furthering military gains rather than addressing the very real socio-economic impact of the crisis.”

Those zones include the shared borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad in the Lake Chad Basin, said Ryan Cummings, director at intelligence firm Signal Risk.

“The scale of the humanitarian disaster in northeast Nigeria has been grossly underestimated,” Mr Cummings said.

“There’s an estimated one million people still living in communities inaccessible because of the ongoing insecurity.”

Now the fear is that Boko Haram will try to capitalise on the failure of the Nigerian government – and the international community – to save the hungry.

“There are many claims that resources allocated to IDP camps are being misdirected into avenues of corruption, so aid is not reaching the people,” Mr Cummings said.

Boko Haram could prey on that anger, he said, warning that “they could potentially end up being recruited back to Boko Haram.”

New MSF survey: Thousands of kids dying in northeast Nigeria

FILE- In this Monday, Aug. 29, 2016, file photo, a malnourished child is weighed on a scale at a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Thousands of children already have died of starvation and disease in Boko Haram-ravaged northeastern Nigeria, Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016 quoting a new survey that is forcing Nigerian officials out of a state of denial. (Sunday Alamba, File/Associated Press)

AP, LAGOS, Nigeria — Thousands of children have died of starvation and disease in Boko Haram-ravaged northeastern Nigeria, Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday quoting a new survey that is forcing Nigerian officials to stop denying the crisis.

The Paris-based organization hopes that official recognition of the calamity in which “thousands are dying” will help bring urgent aid before older children also start dying, Natalie Roberts, emergency program manager for northeast Nigeria, told The Associated Press.

A survey of two refugee camps in the northeastern city of Maiduguri shows a quarter of the expected population of under-5 children is missing, assumed dead, according to the organization. Under-5 mortality rates in the camps are more than double the threshold for declaring an emergency, Roberts said in a phone interview from Paris.

Speaking on her return from northeastern Borno state, the birthplace of Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising, she said the absence of young children was striking.

“We only saw older brothers and sisters. No toddlers are straddling their big sisters’ hips. No babies strapped to their mums’ backs. It’s as if they have just vanished,” Roberts said.

Doctors Without Borders first sounded the alarm in June but senior officials of the National Emergency Management Agency managing the camps as late as September denied any child was suffering malnutrition and accused the doctors of exaggerating the crisis to attract donations. That was after The Associated Press published images of matchstick-thin children fighting for their lives at a Doctors Without Borders intensive feeding center in Maiduguri.

The crisis is aggravated by alleged theft of food aid by emergency management officials being investigated by Nigeria’s senate.

“The difference now is that our figures have been checked by the statistician general, and we have official recognition from the government that they believe this is happening,” Roberts said.

An estimated 75,000 children could die within a year because donors have provided only one-third of requested funding and twice as much, $1 billion, is needed for the rest of the year and into 2017, says the United Nations.

A vital funding conference in Geneva next month could save the day, otherwise “it won’t be long before we could be in the painful position of having to turn away sick and starving children,” says the U.S.-based Save the Children.

Some 2.6 million people including more than 1 million children have been driven from their homes by Nigeria’s 7-year-old insurgency that has killed more than 20,000 people, left food-producing fields fallow, disrupted trade routes and destroyed wells, bridges and entire towns.

President Muhammadu Buhari last month set up a presidential committee to coordinate aid and the rebuilding of the northeast, even as an end to the rainy season has brought a predictable upsurge in attacks on military outposts and urban suicide bombings by the Islamic extremists.

Buhari and Nigeria’s military have said aerial bombardments and a ground offensive that have forced the insurgents out of most towns has the extremists on the run. But aid agencies say they can barely venture outside Maiduguri for fear of attack and are using helicopters to reach dangerous areas.

Boko Haram warns Donald Trump: ‘War is just beginning’

This screen grab image taken on September 25, 2016 from a video released on Youtube by Islamist group Boko Haram shows Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau making a statement at an undisclosed location.

US supported Lake Chad governments in the fight against Boko Haram under the Obama administration.

By Ludovica Iaccino (International Business Times).

A faction of the Nigeria-based terror group Boko Haram has warned US president-elect Donald Trump that “the war has just begun”. The faction leader, Abubakar Shekau, made the comment in an audio recording posted on social media on Sunday (13 November 2016), according to Nigerian media.

“Do not be overwhelmed by people like Donald Trump and the global coalition fighting our brethren in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and everywhere. We remain steadfast on our faith and we will not stop. To us, the war has just begun,” Shekau was quoted by the Sahara Reporters website as saying.

“We’re done with Obama, now we’re going to start with Trump… we remain convinced by our faith and we will not stop. For us, the war is just beginning,”Shekau added, according to news agency AFP.

It is also believed that Shekau claimed responsibility for an attack that resulted in the death of some Nigerians soldiers, including Lieutenant-Colonel Muhammad Abu Ali, earlier in November.

The Islamist fighter made the remarks days after Republican Trump defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for the US presidency.

Fight against Boko Haram

Boko Haram has waged a seven-year-long insurgency in north-eastern Nigeria, killing thousands of people. The conflict, which erupted in 2009, has spilled over into neiughbouring countries, sparking a grave humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad basin region, where 2.6 million people are currently displaced.

In addition to its own military operation Lafiya Dole, Nigeria is now leading a regional offensive – consisting of 8,700 troops from Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin – against Boko Haram.

The offensive has scored some successes, such as the recapture of key territories and the release of thousands of civilians held captive by the group.

Although Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari declared a technical victory over the fight against the insurgents in December 2105, Boko Haram still carries out attacks, with security experts warning that underlyin g issues such as disenfranchisement, poverty and strong links with the Islamic State (Isis) would continue to pose major threats to stability in the region.

Earlier this year, the group split into two factions after Shekau was replaced with the IS-appointed Abu Musab Al-Barnawi, former Boko Haram spokesperson.

Shekau, however, denied he had been replaced and claimed al-Barnawi was staging a coup against him.

US assistance to Nigeria

The US, one of Nigeria’s closest allies, has repeatedly condemned Boko Haram attacks. In October 2015, outgoing US leader Barack Obama reiterated that the US “continues to support the governments and people of the Lake Chad Basin region in their ongoing struggle to defeat Boko Haram”.

Obama added his country would provide the Nigerian army with intelligence personnel and training. The US also said it was considering lifting its arms ban on Nigeria. The embargo is part of the Leahy Law, which forbids the US from providing military assistance or funding to countries that commit – or are suspected of committing – gross human-rights abuses with impunity.

Exclusive: Donald Trump Could Pull U.S. From Nigeria’s Boko Haram Fight, Warns Wole Soyinka

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka takes part in a debate in Berlin, Germany, July 3, 2012. Soyinka pledged to cut up his green card if Donald Trump was elected U.S. president.

By Conor Gaffey (Newsweek).

The victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race could jeopardize U.S. support in Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram, according to Nigerian Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka.

In an exclusive interview, Soyinka tells Newsweek that Trump’s “bunker mentality” could see the U.S. withdraw support for counter-terrorism operations in West Africa.

The Nigerian author and playwright also says that he will not destroy his U.S. residency permit just yet, despite a pre-election pledge to “cut” his green card, which is afforded to immigrants granted permanent residence in the country.

Trump, the Republican party candidate, shocked pollsters by defeating Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s vote. The businessman and former reality television star secured victories in key swing states, capitalizing on an anti-establishment feeling among voters to win out against his more experienced rival.

Boko Haram, an Islamist militant group, launched an armed insurgency against the Nigerian government in 2009, killing thousands and displacing more than 2 million since then. The group also pledged allegiance to the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) in 2015, though it has recently split into factions following the appointment in August of an ISIS-approved leader.

Under the administration of Barack Obama, the U.S. has provided financial support and military training to West African countries fighting Boko Haram. The U.S. provided $71 million worth of equipment, logistics and training to five countries—Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Benin—that together formed a joint task force in 2015 to fight the militants, according to a February fact sheet from the U.S. State Department.

Obama also approved the deployment of up to 300 U.S. military personnel to Cameroon in October 2015 to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations in the region.

“One should expect that level of collaboration to diminish. Trump’s mentality is one of, ‘What are we doing there? What business do we have over there?’” says Soyinka, speaking to Newsweek from New York.

“I foresee Trump dismissing that kind of expectation offhand and closing in, shrinking, becoming smaller in terms of [the U.S.’s] presence in other parts of the world,” he says.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari extended his congratulations to Trump on Wednesday, saying that he looked forward to working with the president-elect “to build on and strengthen relations between Nigeria and the U.S.”

Trump had little to say about U.S. foreign policy towards Africa in general and Nigeria specifically during his presidential campaign. While he has vowed to pursue ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Republican has made no mention of whether he intends to persist with or discontinue the country’s support for counter-terrorism efforts in West Africa. Newsweek contacted the Trump campaign for further comment but received no immediate reply.

An analysis by South Africa-based thinktank the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) suggested that Trump could become “the single most effective recruiting tool for terrorist organizations across the globe,” including in Africa. The ISS cited Trump’s hardline rhetoric towards Muslims, his advocation of the use of torture and expressed desire to target the families of militants all as potential factors in Trump being used by militant groups in recruitment drives. Trump’s campaign pledge to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S. has already been used in a propaganda video by Al-Shabab, a Somali militant group aligned with Al-Qaeda.

Soyinka is based between Nigeria and the U.S., where he is affiliated to several universities. In a recent discussion with students at the University of Oxford in the U.K., which was shared in a video on October 27, the author vowed to destroy his green card should Trump be declared the winner of the election.

Following the announcement of Trump’s victory on Wednesday, Nigerians took to social media to question Soyinka about whether he would honor his pledge.

The Nigerian author—who was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1986—says he is biding his time until Trump is inaugurated in January before deciding on his next steps.

“Why don’t we wait until Trump actually takes office?” says Soyinka. “I’m just going about my normal commitments, but definitely not getting into any more commitments. Let’s put it that way for now.”

Officers: 83 Nigerian soldiers missing in Boko Haram attack

By Haruna Umar and Michelle Faul | AP

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Some 83 Nigerian soldiers are missing in action since Boko Haram Islamic extremists attacked a remote military base in the northeast, senior army officers said Sunday.

The soldiers were unable to fight back and fled because Boko Haram had superior fire power, the officers told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to give information to reporters.

Morale also was low among the troops because they were being rationed to one meal a day and their allowances were being pilfered by their commanders, the officers said.

Army spokesman Col. Sani Kukasheka Usman reported last week that “some” soldiers were missing and 13 wounded when the insurgents on Oct. 17 attacked their base in Gashigar village, on the border with Niger. Usman has not responded to requests for the actual number.

Dozens of fleeing troops jumped into the Niger River and 22 were pulled from the water by soldiers from that neighboring country, officers said. Many soldiers are feared to have drowned, they said.

In a separate development, hunters killed seven Boko Haram fighters who were burning buildings and huts in northeastern Makwaa village, the hunters and villagers confirmed Sunday. “We engaged them in a fierce battle for close to three hours, we overpowered them, resulting in the killing of seven,” hunter Aisha Gombi said of Saturday night’s firefight. “One was caught alive with gun wounds and others escaped into the bush.”

President Muhammadu Buhari promised to better arm Nigeria’s military when he was elected in March 2015, blaming corruption for the deaths of thousands including soldiers in the 7-year-old Islamic insurgency that has killed more than 20,000 people.

Billions of dollars meant to buy arms were stolen or diverted to the presidential campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan, according to ongoing court cases.

Military officers also are currently facing courts-martial for allegedly selling arms and ammunition to Boko Haram, indicating the corruption bedeviling the country’s fight against the Islamic extremists continues despite government efforts to halt graft.

Still, the military in the past year has succeeded in dislodging the insurgents from most towns and villages where they had set up an Islamic caliphate. But the extremists continue to attack remote villages and main roads that they have mined. Nigeria’s army has reported thwarting and killing several suicide bombers in the past month.

The United Nations has warned that tens of thousands among the 2.6 million people forced from their homes by the insurgency are facing famine-like conditions that already are killing children.

___

♦Paul reported from Lagos, Nigeria. Associated Press writer Ibrahim Abdulaziz contributed to this report from Yola, Nigeria.

Revenge Against Nigeria’s Military Leads Some to Boko Haram

The desire for revenge against Nigeria’s heavy-handed military is a leading reason that people join the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group, according to a new study published Monday.

Nearly 60 percent of 119 former Boko Haram fighters interviewed in rehabilitation camps in the country’s northeast cited revenge against the military as having a strong, or being the only, influence in their recruitment.

“They kill innocent people that are not (Boko Haram) members … I think they deliberately do so. So they (victims) join the group to fight the military,” the study quoted one former extremist as saying.

The study also found that many interviewed said they were pressured into joining the extremists.

“Radicalization has less to do with military action per se and more to do with abuses contributing to a need to take revenge,” said the study, conducted by Helsinki-based Finn Church Aid group and The Network for Religious Peacemakers and South Africa’s Vibrand Research in collaboration with Vienna’s KAICIID dialogue center.

It warned that Nigeria’s counter-terrorism strategy “should not be counterproductive in preventing and countering future radicalization and recruitment.”

Nigeria’s military has been accused of gross human rights abuses. Amnesty International has reported that some 7,000, including babies, have died in military detention linked to the uprising. Some have been killed there, while others have starved to death, asphyxiated in overcrowded cells or died of untreated wounds from torture.

President Muhammadu Buhari has promised to halt military abuses, but they continue.

Overall, an estimated 20,000 people have died in the seven-year Boko Haram insurgency.

Last week, Nigeria’s military freed 348 detainees, including 115 children, saying they had been cleared of suspicion after months of screening.

Female Boko Haram victims in Nigerian camps forced to sell sex as food runs out

Security officers are seen at a camp for internally displaced people after they were called to control some people who rallied against camp authorities for what they say is poor distribution of food rations, in Borno, Nigeria, August 29, 2016. REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde

Boko Haram violence has left more than 65,000 people living in famine in the northeast, with one million others at risk

Tired of watching her five children go hungry in a camp for people fleeing Boko Haram in northeastern Nigeria, Amina Ali Pulka decided to befriend a young man who worked in the kitchen.

Desperate due to the lack of aid distributed at the Bakassi camp in the city of Maiduguri, the 30-year-old had sex with the man in exchange for extra food to give to her children.

“I did it because I had nobody to feed me or clothe me,” Pulka told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone, adding that the man, who like her had been uprooted by Boko Haram violence, also gave her money which she used to buy soap and other items.

Pulka is one of many women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in northeast Nigeria who are selling sex in exchange for food, soap, and money, said medical charity International Medical Corps (IMC) and Nigerian research group NOI Polls.

Aid agencies have warned of starvation, malnutrition and dwindling food supplies for the displaced in Borno State.

“At times, the food is not enough so the women resort to giving themselves for food and money,” said Hassana Pindar of the IMC, which runs support centres for women in the camps.

Boko Haram violence has left more than 65,000 people living in famine in the northeast, with one million others at risk, and more than half of children under five are malnourished in some areas of Borno state, a coalition of aid groups said last week.

The Islamist militant group has killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in Nigeria in a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to Islamic laws.

A military offensive has driven Boko Haram from much of the territory it held in northern Nigeria, but the militants have continued to carry out suicide bombings and raids in northeast Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

SEX FOR FOOD AND FREEDOM

Almost 90 percent of people uprooted by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria do not have enough to eat, according to a survey last week by NOI Polls, which found that many women are trading sex for food and the freedom to move in and out of IDP camps.

The pollsters said that sexual abuse was a concern, and that the displaced accused camp officials of perpetrating it in two thirds of cases.

Hundreds of the displaced staged a protest last month in Maiduguri, accusing state officials of stealing food rations, prompting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to order police to arrest and make an example of the culprits.

In addition to mothers desperate to provide for their children, many teenage girls in Bakassi camp are sleeping with men in exchange for food, said IMC volunteer Fatima Alhaji.

“Some go out to beg on the streets, others go out of the camp to look for menial jobs, while others use their bodies to get food and money,” she said. “Everybody is talking about it.”

Five months pregnant, Pulka has been abandoned by the kitchen worker, while she has not seen her husband, who lives in the capital of Abuja with another of his wives, for three years.

Pulka said her husband, who has not visited the camp or sent any money, refused to come and take the children under his care.

Her oldest daughter, 15, is distraught about her pregnancy.

“She asks me why I am pregnant when their father has been away for three years … other people in the camp also ask me questions,” Pulka said. “I did it because of my children.”

(Reporting by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Writing by Kieran Guilbert Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Boko Haram leader Shekau resurfaces in video after claims by the Nigerian army he had been seriously wounded

Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) – The embattled leader of jihadist group Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, resurfaced in a video posted online Sunday, rejecting assertions by the Nigerian army that he had been seriously wounded.

“You have been spreading in the social media that you injured or killed me,” Shekau said in the 40-minute video released on YouTube and dated September 25.

“Oh tyrants, I’m in a happy state, in good health and in safety.”

The Nigerian army said on August 23 that the longtime militant chief had been seriously wounded in the shoulder in an air raid in which several commanders were killed.

Nigerian authorities have reported him dead several times before, but the army’s latest claim was bolstered when Boko Haram — which pledged allegiance last year to the Islamic State (IS) group — released a video on September 13 without Shekau in it.

However, in the video released Sunday, Shekau points to a date on an Islamic calendar corresponding to September 25, 2016.

Speaking in Hausa, Arabic and English and in dialects spoken in northeast Nigeria he appeared to be in good physical health.

He used the video to issue threats against President Muhammadu Buhari, who appealed to the United Nations this week for help in negotiating the release of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the militants more than two years ago.

“If you want your girls, bring back our brethren,” Shekau says.

– Power struggle –

Boko Haram, which has killed at least 20,000 people since 2009 in its quest for a hardline Islamist state in northeast Nigeria, has been in the grip of a power struggle since late last year.

Last month, IS high command said Shekau had been replaced as leader by Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the 22-year-old son of Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf.

But Shekau has maintained he is still in charge.

The first signs of a rift appeared after Shekau pledged allegiance to IS in March 2015 and changed Boko Haram’s name to Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).

Clashes have since been reported between rival Boko Haram factions in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, near Lake Chad.

Barnawi, once a protege of Shekau, has criticised his former mentor for his indiscriminate killing of civilians — most of them fellow Muslims.

He had also criticised the brutal leadership style of Shekau, alleging he has secretly killed top militant commanders who disagreed with him.

But many experts say he is not a spent force.

“He has more fighters than either al-Barnawi or Nur, especially from the Kanuri ethnic group around Lake Chad,” said Jacob Zenn from the Jameston Foundation and an expert on the conflict.

But Zenn said many of Shekau’s backers in the IS were now dead and the embattled leader “may therefore have few supporters in IS ranks to argue for his reinstatement over al-Barnawi.”

“Shekau is therefore most likely to remain independent in the near future, which could mean that there will be no limits to a more indiscriminate killing campaign,” Zenn said.

“This could garner Shekau greater attention as compensation for on-the-ground losses and resource deficiencies.”

Security analysts have said the split could indicate a shift in focus by the pro-Barnawi faction away from targeting crowded marketplaces and mosques to hitting military and government targets.

Along with the tens of thousands killed, Boko Haram has also made more than 2.8 million people homeless, fleeing attacks on villages by ransacking militants in a conflict that has spilled over Nigeria’s borders into Niger, Chad and Cameroon.

But it was the mass kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from the northeastern town of Chibok in July 2015 that brought unprecedented attention to Boko Haram, sparking a global campaign to “Bring Back Our Girls”.

Nigerian soldiers, with the support of regional troops, have recaptured swathes of territory lost to the jihadists since they launched a military campaign in February 2014.

Oil-rich Nigeria is facing security threats on multiple fronts: Boko Haram in the northeast, ethnic violence in the central region, Biafran separatists in the southeast and militants attacking oil infrastructure in the south.

US supported Lake Chad governments in the fight against Boko Haram under the Obama administration.

Fight against Boko Haram

US assistance to Nigeria

Boko Haram violence has left more than 65,000 people living in famine in the northeast, with one million others at risk

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