A young boy is flogged in a public square. Onlookers shout “God is great.” Boko Haram militants shoot civilians in the heart and head, ignoring pleas of innocence and prayers.
The report below contains graphic images from secret Boko Haram videos obtained by VOA and 1st Afrika. The harsh violence may offend some viewers. It shows the reality and cruelty of life under Boko Haram’s rule.
In the northern Nigerian village of Kumshe, the terror group Boko Haram administered a violent and distorted version of Islamic law. Transgressions like wearing western-style clothing or getting a secular education carried extreme punishments. Purported drug dealers – such as the offenders shown in these videos – were sentenced to beatings and death.
Raw, unedited video of Boko Haram operating inside its territory in Nigeria is rare. The group is known for secrecy and carefully hides the identities of members and their whereabouts.
But VOA News obtained 18 hours of uncut videos in which the group recorded scenes of its own brutality. The images, from a Boko Haram laptop captured in a military raid, testify to the devastating suffering Nigerians endured under Boko Haram.
The execution of the men in the town of Kumshe, and other scenes showing Boko Haram members callously going about the daily business of their self-proclaimed caliphate are the subject of a VOA four-part video series, “Boko Haram: Terror Unmasked.”
The unedited recordings made little or no effort to hide the group’s most brutal acts. By all indications – time stamps on the videos, references by fighters, events described in news broadcasts heard in the background – the recordings were made in late 2014 and 2015, a period of expansion
Throughout its seven-year insurgency, Boko Haram has attacked government and civilian targets to win territory and instill fear across northern Nigeria. Leaders promise young foot soldiers martyrdom, conscripting them and sending them into battle lightly armed and with little training. The group has abducted thousands of women and children.
The videos recorded by Boko Haram chronicle one attack on a Nigerian army barracks in the town of Banki. Fighters gather in the morning, and leaders prep them to kill and be killed. The assault turns into chaos, with some militants begging for a gun.
Later, the Boko Haram fighters execute civilians in a nearby village after first interrogating them to find food and money. Boko Haram finances itself with kidnapping for ransom and with extortion and robbery, among other things.
Boko Haram’s campaign of violence has shattered lives, spread fear, displaced millions and destroyed the social order across northeastern Nigeria.
When the militants capture a village, interrogations follow. The goal: to extract information about the loyalties and whereabouts of loved ones who have fled.
Boko Haram’s purpose, as stated by its longtime leader, Abubakar Shekau, is to wage a holy war, ridding Nigeria of any western influences and creating a strict Islamic state. In practice, the group has shown little mercy for Nigerian Muslims, attacking mosques and majority-Muslim towns.
The Boko Haram video below shows leaders justifying killings and other atrocities based on their distorted religious ideology.
At a public tribunal, a messenger steps forward. He speaks for Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram leader in hiding, as militants prepare to execute two of their own.
The charge: homosexuality.
Boko Haram’s violent interpretation of Islam traces to the teachings of its founder, Mohammed Yusuf. Yusuf preached that western education was sinful. Tension between Nigerian authorities and the group escalated into deadly violence in 2009, when police cracked down on Yusuf’s followers and executed Yusuf in the street.
Shekau believes that attacking civilian targets, kidnapping schoolgirls and killing “unbelievers” – Muslims or not – are justified in the name of “jihad.” Religious scholars in Nigeria emphatically reject Boko Haram’s violent theology.
At its peak, Boko Haram controlled a territory twice the size of Belgium. The group’s occupation displaced more than 2 million Nigerians and has led to widespread food insecurity.
Today, many towns formerly under Boko Haram control have been liberated by the Nigerian military and neighboring states. VOA News traveled to northeast Nigeria in September 2016 to confirm military claims of improved security and see firsthand the human cost of Boko Haram’s insurgency.
Accompanied by a 12-truck military convoy outfitted with anti-aircraft guns, VOA visited cities once considered off limits and witnessed how Nigerians are attempting to rebuild. In areas not under military control, Boko Haram remains a threat. The group continues to launch suicide bombings and armed attacks on civilian and military targets.
Source: International Organization for Migration, Nigeria, December 2016
One refugee from Kumshe confirmed that his village was the scene of executions and beatings recorded in the Boko Haram videos.
Shown still images of the village square taken from the videos, he broke down and cried.
Watch the full “Boko Haram: Terror Unmasked”, Part 4 video.
Last week more than 70 died in violence fuelled by poverty, ethnic divisions and competition for land
In the morning, reassurance, in the evening, another mass killing.
When the governor for Sokoto state in north-west Nigeria arrived in Sabon Birni, a district reeling from relentless killings by armed groups, he assured local officials that authorities were in control. Police reinforcements would arrive soon, he added.
Just hours after the governor left the town, 20km from Nigeria’s northern border with Niger, more than 70 people were killed in five villages in the district. The brutal details of the massacre, which took place on 26 May, mirror countless similar attacks by suspected “bandits” across north-western Nigeria and increasingly, southern Niger.
A hoard of more than 100 heavily armed assailants on motorbikes, from camps in the nearby Isah forest, stormed towards the villages, gunning down residents and destroying property, eyewitnesses said.
Desperate villagers called the local police but,
as is common when heavily armed attacks are imminent, no one arrived.
“I am in shock seeing these bodies, we’ve recovered 74 corpses,” said Lawali Kakale Gobir, who lives in a nearby village.
Incessant killings by criminal groups – referred to locally as bandits – are rupturing rural life in one of the poorest parts of the world.
The specific motives for the killings in Sabon Birni are unclear, but the underlying causes fuelling massacres across the region are glaring.
For more than a decade, the area has suffered from incidents of armed robbery and cattle rustling, but as competition for land and resources between ethnic Fulani herders and local farmers has intensified, attacks have become more frequent and more violent. Although “banditry” encompasses a range of criminal activity conducted along various non-ethnic and ethnic factors, many of the recent large-scale armed attacks have been carried out by suspected Fulani assailants.
Many Fulanis – nomadic pastoralists who span west Africa – face the twin threat of climate change and rapid population growth, both of which have diminished available land.
In Nigeria, herders are encroaching on private landmore frequently as grazing reserves disappear. As such, historically muted disputes between Fulani pastoralists and farmers of various ethnicities over land resources have rapidly intensified.
“There is a long history of Fulbe (Fulani) and Hausa people living peacefully and having strong friendships and business ties,” said Chitra Nagarajan, a conflict researcher in Nigeria. “However, many Fulbe people, particularly in more rural areas, have felt not only completely marginalized from government interventions but that policies and programs, for example, the selling of grazing land, have reduced their livelihoods.”
Hausas think Fulani’s grievances are unfounded and given disproportionate attention, she said.
Widespread poverty has heightened the appeal of armed criminality as a way of life. Kidnappings for ransom have become commonplace. Pastoralist life faces threats around the world, but in Nigeria, the violence has been catalyzed by poverty, a failure of local justice, and ethnic divisions.
Almost 70,000 people have fled north-west Nigeria to Niger since April 2019, including 30,000 in the last two months. According to the International Crisis Group, 11,000 people have died since 2011. Many deaths, particularly in Fulani communities, go unreported.
Several army operations have been launched, but most have been largely ineffective.
State governments in the region have resorted to signing controversial and secretive peace agreements with bandits and vigilantes to stop the killings. But the deals soon unravel.
According to Selim Meddeb Hamrouni, a reporting officer at the UNHCR refugee agency in Maradi in south-west Niger, the armed groups have grown more active there, spreading north from Nigeria.
“This 20km band inside the Nigerien border is where we’re seeing attacks happening time and again,” Hamrouni said.
The UNHCR is moving refugees in Niger into towns further inside the country. Niger is already struggling to contain jihadist violence on its soil and is overburdened with refugees from surrounding countries and internal displacement.
Bandit attacks have forced a steady exodus from areas such as Sabon Birni, said Abdu Dan Ige, a 40-year-old health worker.
His village had been peaceful for all his life but is now restless. “We cannot hold even wedding ceremonies without bribing the bandits for them to allow the social events to be held without violence,” he said. “Hardly a day passes without a village being attacked.”
Nigeria’s response is compromised by the decade-long war with jihadists in the north-east. With security forces stretched, armed groups have been able to operate with little resistance in the north-west.
Murtala Rufa’i, a politics and security researcher in Sokoto, said the vast, mineral-rich forests that stretch across northern Nigeria into Niger and the Sahel have become a haven for the groups.
“The forests are vital,” said Rufa’i. “It is vast and not well understood except by the groups that use them, particularly Fulanis because of their pastoralist roots. They’ve used forest tracks to import caches of heavy weapons.”
Nigeria’s north-west and its porous border with Niger is gradually reconfiguring into a nexus for armed groups, he said. In many cases the groups are becoming more heavily armed than local police forces.
A growing concern is that jihadists fleeing pressure in the north-east and coming south from Niger could establish roots in the north-west.
“We’ve seen some jihadist elements try to establish connections with bandit groups,” Rufa’i said. “They’ve so far been unsuccessful but jihadists could see the region as ripe for gaining a foothold and exploiting local grievances.”
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CREDITS
Written by Salem Solomon
Designed and produced by Tatenda Gumbo and Steven Ferri
Researched by : ‘Jide Adesina
