Chadians fighting for B’Haram, says vigilante

A significant component of Boko Haram’s foot soldiers is made up of Chadians, local vigilante, Umar Dawaki, a local vigilante, has said. 

Chad was instrumental to the failed Boko Haram ceasefire declared on October 20.

The declaration was met with public apprehension few hours later when the insurgents resumed their attacks, but Moussa Mahamat Dago of the Chadian foreign ministry insisted that the peace deal was still on.

More than a month after, attacks are on in full throttle and the Chadian government has kept mum on the peace deal it initiated, prompting a Nigerian government official to inform TheCable on how Idriss Deby, president of Chad, tricked Nigeria into the phantom ceasefire.

TheCable later exclusively reported that Chad was fuelling the Boko Haram insurgency in order to realise its long-running interest in controlling the oil-rich Chad Basin in Borno state.

On Wednesday, Dawaki told the BBC that local vigilantes and hunters assisting Nigerian soldiers to fight the insurgents in the northeast regularly came up against Chadians.

“I killed more than 10 of them and we could see some were Chadian,” he said. “We could tell by the tribal marks on their faces.”

Dawaki, a cemetery inspector in Yola, capital of Adamawa state, has volunteered to join the battle against Boko Haram and would have no issues losing his life in the process.

He was one of the vigilantes who joined hunters and the military to chase Boko Haram out of Mubi two weeks ago.

“Nigeria is my country,” he said. “I will fight for my country. I would lose my life for my country.”

Ahead of his next fight, he said: “You know it’s a war. Maybe I will be back or maybe I will not be back.

“But even my children would be proud to say their father died fighting Boko Haram.”

His weapons include a small knife with which he slices the throat of insurgents, and a bow and arrow, in addition to buffalo horns dipped in cobra poison.

“A knife cannot penetrate us. If bombs drop, they cannot kill us.”

Yet, he believes it would be unfair to say vigilantes and hunters are more crucial to winning the war against insurgency than the soldiers are.

“The vigilantes alone cannot do this job, so if anybody tells you they have more hope in the hunters than the soldiers, I don’t believe them,” he said.