Ime Akpan
A member of the Presidential Committee on the North-east Initiative (PCNI), Dr. Sidi Ali Mohammed, has said that Boko Haram insurgents pay their fighters about N1, 080, 000 ($3, 000) as daily allowance.
Speaking at the presentation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Sub-Sahara Africa Economic Outlook Report in Abuja on Monday, April 29, 2019, Mohammed also said Nigerian soldiers on the front-line are paid N1, 000 daily.
Mohammed who said the Boko Haram allowance is a far cry from the paltry sum earned by Nigerian soldiers added that the insurgents now operated like a cartel.
Speaking on the modus operandi of the group and how the fighters were being incentivised, he said: “I will give you an example. The Nigerian military for example, gets N1, 000 per day for being in the northeast, at the war front, as an allowance.
“The same northeast where, if you are a member of Boko Haram, you get $3, 000 per day as allowance.
“So it is lucrative. Sometimes, they even give you money upfront. So, we must do something about the youths from where they are recruiting.”
The PCNI chief also gave reason the Boko Haram insurgency thrived saying: “Part of the reason why this problem has refused to go away is the abundant natural resources in the Lake Chad Region. We need to think outside the box. It is now more like a cartel.
“When you see the type of weapons they use, it is more sophisticated than the type of weapons that our military are using.”
Furthermore, he likened the Boko Haram scourge to guerilla warfare.”
“As we are here discussing, if somebody here is a member of Boko Haram, he will not say anything.
“He goes out there to strategise and comes back. It therefore means the conventional ways of fighting warfare cannot work here. It therefore calls for thinking outside of the box.”
On the way out, Mohammed said: “If it is amnesty that will guarantee that peace, then we have to think of it. Most importantly, we need to deplete the army of youths on the streets and take them away from the streets so that Boko Haram does not recruit them.
“Don’t forget, they (Boko Haram members) are being killed on daily basis but they are also recruiting on daily basis. They are getting people to recruit because it is lucrative.”
He added that ending the Boko Haram insurgency would require a lot of thinking outside the box because the conventional ways of fighting war would not work.
He said the failure of governance must be fixed so that Boko Haram can no longer exploit the vacuum created, most especially between local communities and their local officials.
