Boko Haram recruited three local gangs in to kidnap hundreds of schoolboys on its behalf in Katsina, security and local sources said Wednesday.
The jihadist group has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack, which targeted a secondary school in the town of Kankara, in Katsina state,an attack that has caused so much pain and chaos in the Northern part of the country.
However sources disclosed the operation was carried out on Boko Haram’s orders by a notorious local gangster called Awwalun Daudawa.
The 43-year-old worked in collaboration with Idi Minorti and Dankarami, two other crime chiefs with strong local followings, they said.
Criminal gangs, known locally as bandits, have terrorised communities in the northwest for years, and experts recently warned of attempts by jihadists to forge an alliance with them.
Daudawa “was an armed robber and a cattle rustler before he turned to gun-running, bringing in weapons from Libya, where he had received training, and selling them to bandits,” said a security source.
“Over time, he forged an alliance with Boko Haram and became their gunrunner, taking weapons the group seizes from the Nigerian security forces in raids and ambushes and selling them to bandits for a cut.”
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The source added: “Awwalun Daudawa was spotted in the forest in the Kankara area where he recently relocated and there were reports that he was planning something but it was not clear what it was.”
The attack occured while President Muhammadu Buhari was on a week-long private visit to Katsina state, in the town of Daura, less than 200 kilometres (224 miles) away.
#BringBackOurBoys started trending on social media, in reference to a similar hashtag, #BringBackOurGirls, after the Chibok kidnappings.
“Attacks on schools and abductions of children are war crimes,” warned Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, adding that the children kidnapped were “in serious risk of being harmed and being forced to become child soldiers.”
Parents of the missing children are pleading to the federal government and the Nigerian Army to take relevant steps into rescuing the abducted students and return them home safely.
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