There are vigorous designations that more Nigerians in the North are resorting to self avail by taking up arms against the terrorist group, Boko Haram. Members of vigilante groups in the region are verbally expressed to be procuring minute arms.
The groups are different from the Volunteer Vigilance Youths’ Group, popularly kenned as the ‘Civilian JTF,’ which is modelled after the multi-accommodation Joint Task Force composed to tackle the insurgency.
The vigilante groups, made up residents of villages that suffer frequent attacks by Boko Haram, are verbally expressed to be accumulating weapons with which to obviate their territories from further attacks by the sect.
A report by a United States-predicated newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, on Thursday verbalized the people, especially in the North-East mostly affected by the insurgency, were moved towards self auspice due to a “limited headway” the Nigerian military had made against the sect.
The journal quoted the Incipient York Council on Foreign Relations as saying, “Many people in northern Nigeria, frustrated by a five-year insurgency and what they call a lack of military aegis, are authoritatively mandating what passes for bulletproof apparel, buying homemade muskets and organising ragtag militias.”
The WSJ report further verbalized, “Their (Nigerian military’s) failure to avail rescue the girls has reinforced a credence among mundane people that only they alone can vanquish Boko Haram.
“So, residents are assembling their own armies. Three proximately linked vigilante groups have taken root over the past year. They count more than 11,000 members between them.
“At first, they were equipped with sticks, machetes and table legs. Now, they are scaling up, procuring locally made barrel-loaded shotguns cobbled together from car components and scrap wood.”
The journal reported that a 74-year-old bean farmer in Maiduguri, Maina Bulama, stitched thick leather amulets into tank tops his customers wore beneath their shirts.
“I can’t even tell you the number of people I’ve given these to,” Bulama was quoted as saying.
A vigilante group composed of residents of Kalabalge, a town in the north of Borno State, had on May 14, 2014 mounted a fierce resistance to a siege by members of Boko Haram, killing 41 of the insurgents.
