The war against the insurgency in the north east part of Nigeria has become a mouth a topnotch job for any jobless youth on the street in those regions. A member of the Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative (PCNI) Dr. Sidi Ali Mohammed has disclosed Boko Haram fighters were being paid $3,000 daily. He made this disclosure at the Presentation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Sub-Sahara Africa’s Economic Outlook Report, in Abuja on Monday.
According to him, the payment dwarfs the N1,000 daily allowance paid to Nigerian troops at the war front. Mohammed, who is the Head of the Humanitarian Assistance and Rehabilitation arm of the PCNI, lamented that Boko Haram has been hijacked and operates like a cartel.
“I will give you an example. The Nigerian military, for example, gets N1,000 per day for being in the North East, at the war front, as an allowance.
“The same North East, 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.”
On how to tackle the insurgency, he 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 went on: “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.”
He further stated the Boko Haram menace “is like a 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.”