BY SEGUN ADEOSUN
There were disturbing reports, Monday, that leaders of the world’s most dreaded terrorist group, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, had been smuggling jihadists into Nigeria from Syria to train them and then export them to Britain for possible attacks.
Leading British tabloid, The Sun, reported that ISIS commanders were exploiting the heavy air traffic between Lagos and London to cause mayhem in British streets.
But The Crest could not confirm the veracity of the claim as efforts to reach Brig. Gen. John Agim, the Director Defence Information, Defence Headquarters, Abuja, were futile.
According to a report by The Sun of London, the ISIS leaders had been exploiting the porous borders of Nigeria and several other West African countries to execute an ‘exchange programme’ with local insurgents, notably Boko Haram.
The group had been reportedly sending hardened jihadists from Syria, while local insurgents were also being sent to the Middle East for training.
The newspaper reported that there were more than 150 British troops in Nigeria, helping our forces with counter-terrorism training to prevent ISIS from seizing the region.
The British tabloid recalled a training mission in Kaduna where a senior Air Force commander, who it identified as Group Captain Isaac Subi, reportedly revealed how jihadi groups in Nigeria had been learning from the Islamic State since Boko Haram swore allegiance to it.
“They come and train their fighters here and some of our insurgents too are granted access to their training in Yemen and Syria, acquiring those skills and they come back and teach others,” the paper quoted the 46-year-old Group Captain, who has been fighting terrorism across Africa since 1991, as saying. “They have this exchange programme of fighters.”
“There are hundreds of fighters. It’s a virus that spreads across our borders. Their action leaves trails of blood and tears and sorrow.”
The scary revelation may not offer any surprise to the Defence Headquarters. The Punch newspaper quoted Brig. Gen. Agim, the Defence spokesman, as saying in an exclusive interview he granted the medium that the military high command knew that there “were foreigners who sneaked in as a result of the porous borders.”
“We know that some of the attackers in the North-East are also not Nigerians,” he continued. “Some of the attackers were brought in because they thought they could make money.
“Those who are recruited sometimes do it for money. You must have seen the video where hoodlums in Niger and Chad were begging to be recruited into the Boko Haram group and to come to Nigeria. So the issue is that some people, who are looking for something to do, are willing instruments in the hands of whoever wants to recruit them.
“So the problem is that some idle people who are willing individuals are available for whoever wants to recruit them. And sadly enough, our borders are porous.”
The Punch, however, reported the spokesman of the Nigeria Immigration Service, Sunday James, who assured that the agency was doing its best to strengthen security across Nigeria’s borders. He said this was been done with a view to ensuring that “no foreign entity is allowed by whatever means into the country by land, air or waterways.”
Perhaps to justify that, James said the proactive measures taken by the Nigeria Immigration Service to secure our borders had been yielding fruits “going by the several arrests in recent past around the country by the Special Border Patrol Corps operatives of the NIS trained and deployed to carry out reconnaissance patrol.”
The Sun of London alluded to the fact that the resultant “poisonous influence” of the scary jihadi exchange programme had yielded terror attacks on British soil.
It cited the 2013 tragic fatal stabbing of an off-duty police officer, Fusilier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death in London by two British citizens of Nigerian descent, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. While Adebolajo will die in prison, Adebowale got the minimum 45 years in jail for the gruesome murder.
Boko Haram insurgents have reportedly killed over 20,000 people in the North East in the last four years, and an estimated two million had been turned into refugees in their own country.
These are besides the hundreds abducted by the group over time. Over 100 Chibok girls are still in Boko Haram captivity; same as Leah Sharibu who was abducted in Nigeria from her school in Dapchi, Yobe State, early this year.
Many abducted girls and women were either forced into marriages or sold as sex slaves. Now, the scariest of all is the turning of children to human bombs.
Britain has been a strategic partner to Nigeria in the war against insurgency. The country has several teams training Nigeria’s air force, army, naval special forces and the equivalent of the SAS.
