New reports by an international aid organisation, Mercy Corps, have revealed how Boko Haram insurgents use informal micro credit schemes and promises of safety to recruit hundreds of youths and pupils as fighters.

The beneficiaries, the reports funded by the Ford Foundation added, received amounts ranging from N10,000 to N1m in order to buy motorcycles, restock their trading stores and grow their small-scale businesses.

The reports, presented on Thursday in Lagos, also highlighted how repression from the military and access to interest-free finance, among others, had perpetuated terrorism and elicited sympathy from communities in the North.

However, the Lead Researcher and Global Director, Conflict Management for Mercy Corps, Rebecca Wolfe, said many of the locals did not know that the credits were from the insurgents.

The reports noted, “Roughly one out of three respondents had completed secular secondary school and about the same number had completed some sort of Islamic schooling.”

Titled, “Motivations and Empty Promises: Voices of former Boko Haram combatants and Nigerian Youth and Gifts and Graft: How Boko Haram uses Financial Services for Recruitment and Support,” the reports revealed that peer pressure and the availability of girls were also incentives to the beneficiaries.

According to Wolfe, 47 former members of the insurgent groups, comprising 21 females and 26 males, 45 community members and seven others, who refused the sect’s incentives were interviewed during the study.

She added, “Sometimes the people did not know. It is usually something like a friend coming to give them money for their business and they later find out that the friend is a member of Boko Haram. I asked them, ‘Don’t you people know?’ But it turned out that sometimes, they did not know what they were getting into.

“One male recipient shared how he was complaining to a friend that he wanted a job so he could better provide for his parents. The friend then liaised with Boko Haram leaders to secure a motorcycle to allow the recipient start a business,” she said.

Meanwhile, the reports recommended that the government should, in the post-conflict era, “increase the quality, availability and diversity of financial services, particularly to youths with small, informal businesses. Increase transparency and accessibility to government-led economic programmes. Explore financial services to help youths achieve their ambitions, among other interventions.”

A member of the team, Ballama Mustafa, who urged the government to make its presence felt in remote communities in the region, added that interventions should be interest-free and should not exclude locals, who are not literate.

He added, “There are diverse paths to membership. Some were abducted and some joined because they had friends who were insurgents. Some joined to avenge the deaths of their family members or friends. When the military invades a community after a terrorist attack, you find that the military arrests people indiscriminately. But Boko Haram also does that. When they go into a community, they can kill parents who have prevented their children from joining them. One of our recommendations is that communities and schools should create counter-narratives to dissuade youths and pupils from joining the sect."

deantimes:
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abokibuhari:
where is buhari?

deantimes:
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blackpanda:



You again you are so obsessed with buhari. What is wrong with u?

madridguy:
Ok

GlorifiedTunde:
Fantastic research.

This is the kind of research the FG should bankroll. But of course, what do we know. Before a white must have done this, there must have been a lot of resources expended in terms of security and incentives.

From all what I see now, it shows that the major problem of the north is ignorance. The deprivation of the north from effective western education and civilization by their previous leaders and elites has dealt this nation a serious blow.

Before poverty comes ignorance.

I doubt whether they would have successfully recruited mercenaries from the south even if southerners were broke.

Now all these makes me ask again, do we really think bokoharam was only fuelled and financed within the confines of this nation?

My answer is a big "NO"

If you're still thinking bokoharam is a PDP or APC affair, then you're just a surface web crawler.

Junior66:

blame their religion and not their lack of certificates. These are men who tore and burnt their certificates in public before joining Boko Haram. That was long before Boko Haram even started fighting anybody. There are Engineers, Doctors and top grade students who have joined ISIS. What do you say about them? Are there ignorant too? What about the Egyptian millionaire prince who joined ISIS and about a year latter volunteer for suicide bombing and died? Was he poor, just in case u wana blame poverty.

deantimes:
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