Zulum faults exaggerated kidnapped Gambouru residents in Borno
By Njadvara Musa, Maiduguri
Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum has faulted the exaggerated kidnapped Gambouru residents by suspected Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists on Sunday.
The kidnapped residents are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in ISS Gambouru/Ngala border community with Cameroon.
According to him, the residents, comprising women, were abducted, while fetching firewood to supplement their means of livelihood.
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Zulum faulted the abduction figures on Thursday during a visit of the Northeast Ambassadors group to the Governor at Government House, Maiduguri.
However, several media organizations have reported contradicting figures since the incident occurred.
Some of them said; “Three hundred and nineteen were kidnapped without quoting any sources to back their claims, while others quoted 100 abductees.
“The foreign media quoted 200 as the figures of the abducted victims without stating any of the verifiable sources.”
Responding to Sunday’s incident, Zulum urged those reporting the incident to be careful as “Nobody could be able to ascertain the number of the abducted persons.”
“As the Chief Security Officer of the state, I am yet to receive any official figure on the abduction in Gambouru/Ngala. So we must be very careful of making unverifiable predictions.
“What you heard a few days ago in Gambouru/Ngala is about recruitment. They lost their members and their numbers have depleted and they are now looking for new recruits and women to cook for them.
“We are yet to ascertain the correct numbers of the abducted victims. Some may have decided to go voluntarily.
“And that’s what I am afraid of. If people decided to go to the bush voluntarily, you cannot do anything to stop them. That has been my fear since.
“Reliably, I was informed that some of the women were returning to the bush willingly. Even in Mafa, I went a few days ago and I saw a group of 200 women who said they wanted to go to the bush.
They said they are in the camp and they are not getting anything. We went and calmed them.
This also underscores the fact that there is hunger in the IDPs. We therefore needed your support especially at the local government levels where we have resettled our people.
We needed to provide them with durable and sustainable livelihood. We needed to move away from the immediate solutions to medium and long time durable solutions. Because once we don’t take care of the IDPs, we will be at a risk of them returning back to the fighters in the forest.
We have heard situations where they are calling them from the bush and mocking them that they are suffering. Even when their colleagues who surrendered asked them to come out they always asked them what the government had done for them,”he said.
He explained that no fewer than 162,000 insurgents and their family members have surrendered under the Borno State Model. He said that this was the first time in the world that such numbers of ex-fighters laid down their arms through the exit program of the state government.
According to Zagazola Makama, an insurgency expert, in the Lake Chad region, the State Emergency Management Agency SEMA), the Camp Officials at Gambouru/Ngala, and the Nigerian Army, confirmed that there was abduction of some women but could not ascertain their numbers.
