Nigerian Major General Ibrahim Manu Yusuf, commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MJTF) fighting the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in the Lake Chad Basin, announced August 7 that 109 Boko Haram fighters and their prisoners had defected on the Nigerian-Cameroonian border. Yusuf said the defection was encouraged by a campaign through which Boko Haram fighters who defect would be pardoned. This specific group of defectors have been taken to the Cameroonian Center for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration. The facility reportedly was built to accommodate 100 but already has 250 residents.
According to Voice of America (VOA), the defectors consisted of forty-five Nigerian and three Cameroonian fighters, forty-five Nigerian children, and sixteen women, characterized as “sex slaves.” It is not clear whether the women and children had been kidnapped.
One defector said he had joined Boko Haram in return for a promised motorcycle. He said that in the two years he had been part of the movement he had been unable to see his two wives, perhaps implying that his participation was coerced.
Voice of America has expanded its on-the-ground coverage in Borno; it is to be anticipated that there will be more objective reporting on Boko Haram and the MJTF.
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John Campbell is the Ralph Bunche senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He was a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria. He writes the blog Africa in Transition. This article first appeared in CFR.
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