The alert by Defence Headquarters (DHQ) of a new terror group, the Lukarawa in Sokoto and Kebbi states would seem a fresh dimension to the metastasising insecurity in the country.
The news must have unsettled Nigerians, especially the northwest that has been battling the festering challenge of banditry. In the last couple of years, banditry manifesting in kidnapping for ransom, despoliation of villages and senseless killings has left that region a ghost of its former self. This has in turn, taken a huge toll on agricultural production as farmers refuse to go to farms for fear for their lives.
So, the emergence of another terror group in that region carries with it all the trappings of a canary in the coal mine. But is the terror group really ‘new’ in the security trajectory of the northwest region? That is perhaps, one issue this column seeks to explore.
DHQ spokesman, Edward Buba who announced the emergence of the ‘new’ terror group, said Lukarawa is linked to Islamic State (ISIS) and its members crossed into Nigeria from Niger Republic. He said when the terror group first settled in Sokoto and Kebbi states, the locals accommodated them and did not report to security agencies until they started to cause havoc.
According to him, this is the first time the Sahelian jihadists are making incursions into our country taking advantage of gaps in cooperation between Nigeria and Niger, the difficult terrain and under-governed areas to spread their ideology. The ideology they are propagating was not disclosed but the military said the group emerged last year after the coup in Niger that led to the breakdown of cooperation between that country and Nigeria.
The key issues raised by the military are that Lukarawa is a new terror group that emerged after last year’s coup in Niger Republic; they are just making their first incursion into Nigeria and the communities accommodated them without informing the security agencies. Its corollary is that the security agencies had no prior information on their presence before the last coup in Niger Republic.
All these seek to place culpability for the emergency and current threat posed by the Lukarawa terror group on the shoulders of the local communities in Sokoto and Kebbi states. That may well be.
While a peep into accounts of people from those areas show some similarities with the military narrative on how the terror group settled in the villages, there exist remarkable differences in terms of their time of settlement, the knowledge of their presence the security agencies had and why the locals allowed them in the first place.
A study conducted in 2021 indicated that the Lukarawa group was initially invited from Mali by local leaders in Gudu and Tangaza local governments of Sokoto State in 2017 to address the growing banditry incursions from Zamfara State.
Another 2022 study by Murtala Rufa’i, James Barnett and Abdulaziz Abdulaziz showed that Lukarawa rejected the title of Boko Haram, rather preferring to be called Mujahdeen or Ansaru, the franchiseof Al-Qaeda. It started by protecting the locals in its strongholds, attacking military formations and civilians considered to be informants to the military.
The study also revealed that when local leaders in Gudu and Tangaza LGAs of Sokoto State invited the Lukarawa group in 2017 to address banditry incursions from Zamfara, they solicited for cash, cows, logistics and weapons to help the group protect them and even recruited youths to join them. The report said they are Malians who speak Arabic and Fulfulde.
A resident of Tangaza LGA, Mallam Bello Tangaza corroborated the invitation of the group by locals for protection about six years ago after being assailed by banditry manifesting in kidnapping and cattle rustling as security agencies could not offer much help.
According to him, those initially invited were 10 well-armed men because of their track record as a vigilante group. He said after the police failed to rescue some of their kidnapped community leaders, the group moved in and rescued them together with rustled cows and sheep.
But things went awry when the group went beyond their mandate to enforce, collect levies and indulge in other illegal activities. They preached some weird ideology, checked people’s phones and broke memory cards they found to contain music. They also flogged people who played or downloaded music from their phones. The community leaders who initially invited them got tired of their excesses and sought their quick exit. When community and religious leaders got tired of their excesses, they provided valuable information to the authorities.
But the threat was downplayed. This enabled the group to re-group and re-emerge in 2021, aligning with bandits and Fulani communities. That was perhaps, when their escapades assumed monstrous and lethal proportions.
It is not clear at what point the community leaders sought the assistance of security agencies to quit the group from their area. But one thing not in doubt is that the security agencies had knowledge of the presence of the group, even if they misread their motive or underestimated their capacities.
A local government information officer in Tangaza, Bala Ibrahim Gidan-Madi had then also confirmed that a former commissioner of police in the state, Murtala Mani had visited the communities as part of efforts to beef up security.
When the matter was first reported by the media, then spokesperson of Sokoto State police command, Cordelia Nwawe had said they were not bandits but herders from Mali with their wives and children, cattle, cows and donkey.
“They came to same area annually from Mali in search of water for their cattle…they went back since Tuesday, November 27, 2018 and no attack on any person or damage to farm crop was recorded”, she had said. The police enjoined Sokoto and its environs not to panic but to go about their lawful duties without fear or apprehension.
Just before last week’s alert by the DHQ, Sokoto State government raised alarm on the presence of the terror group in five LGAs of the state. Spokesman of the state police command, Ahmed Rufai gave further insight on how long the terror group had stayed in the area when he said, “they have been in those areas for some years now. They are armed with weapons and part of their agenda is to impose their own kind of religious practice on the people”.
There are clear issues in the attestations and copious evidence provided by the locals and the police authorities. The first is that the Lukarawa group was initially invited by local leaders to help them fight back the menace of banditry. But the group soon turned a verity of Frankenstein monster. Second, the group came from Mali and may have crossed in from Niger because the later shares boarders with Nigeria. They are largely Malians.
Again, they are not ‘new’ in the northwest as their presence dates as far back as 2018. They had in the past, reportedly mounted attacks against military formations even if in isolated and feeble circumstances. The state government and the police had clear evidence of their presence but may have been handicapped in confronting them just as was the case with banditry.
So, it was not entirely correct for the military to lay the blame for the incursions of the Lukarawa group solely on the locals who took resort to self-help due to the inability of security agencies to protect them. Assuming without conceding the locals failed to report their presence to security agencies, it smacks of intelligence failure for the terror group to operate for that long without notice.
The coup in Niger, leading to breakdown in cooperation may have a hand in the spread of the terror group. But it was not the major factor. There has been evidence of Lukarawa presence in Sokoto and Kebbi states for some years before that coup.
At any rate, with the diplomatic faceoff between Nigeria and Niger and threat of military action by ECOWAS against the latter, one had expected strict manning of the borders to prevent infiltration of the enemy. But that did not appear to have happened given the excuses by the military on Lukarawa exploiting the difficult terrain and under-governed areas after the coup to spread terror.
What seems to have emerged from all this, is that security agencies were either handicapped in confronting the Lukarawa terror group or they underestimated their capacities for evil. Ironically, we seem to be repeating the same mistakes that led to the escalation of Boko Haram insurgency.
It has been argued with varying degrees of persuasion that had the early activities of Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf been promptly checked, this country would have been saved the enormous toll in human and material capital expended on that unending war. But, was there any prospect of security agencies meaningfully engaging the Lukarawa group invited to protect the locals against the menace of bandits then? That is the dialectical poser.
