Hundreds of members of Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist terror group, have defected after the death of the sect’s leader this year.
Nigeria’s military has said that more than 1,000 Boko Haram fighters and family members have surrendered to the government and renounced the group’s jihadism in recent weeks.
Separately, authorities in neighbouring Cameroon also said more than 260 of the group’s members had turned themselves in at a deradicalisation centre in the north of the country.
Among those to surrender in Nigeria are the group’s top bomb expert and his second in command, said General Onyema Nwachukwu, a military spokesman. Most are women and children.
Some defectors were photographed at a ceremony bearing placards with slogans such as “Peace is the only way” and “Nigerians please forgive us”. They were also handed care packages containing groceries, clothes and toiletries.
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General Nwachukwu said the defectors would be reintegrated into society and added that he hoped they would persuade their “brothers and colleagues to come out and embrace the new life of peace and rehabilitation”.
Nigeria’s military has trumpeted the defections as the result of battlefield victories, but analysts believe divisions within the jihadist movement may have played a bigger role.
Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, was killed in May after fighters from a breakaway jihadist faction, Islamic State in West Africa Province (Iswap), attacked his forest hideout in Nigeria’s Borno state. Many senior Boko Haram commanders subsequently joined Iswap while those who did not have received death threats.
Under Shekau’s leadership Boko Haram waged a murderous campaign of killings, suicide bombings and abductions against civilians, whereas Iswap’s strategy is more focused on winning popular support.
“These defectors have been driven out by factional warfare among the insurgents,” said Audu Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. “Iswap does not allow predatory attacks against civilians, so many people who benefitted from those predatory attacks are now finding it impossible to survive.
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“Added to that is the insecurity within jihadist-controlled territory created by internal warfare. Many of those coming out are civilian sympathisers fleeing this insecurity.”
“The split among the insurgents is driving a lot of defections,” said Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development in Aubja, the Nigerian capital. “Many people who were in the Shekau-led faction do not want to pledge allegiance to Iswap and are leaving.”
However, government amnesty programmes may have also encouraged the defectors to leave Boko Haram, said Hassan. For years Nigeria’s government has offered vocational training and other support to people who renounce the group.
These schemes are controversial, seen by many Nigerians as rewarding people who have embraced terrorism, and photographs of the defectors being handed free clothes and food provoked a backlash on social media.
“Providing them with provisions that displaced people do not have and photographing them, that is totally wrong,” said Hassan. “There is a feeling that ‘These guys are getting treated better than we are.’”
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Last month 601 former Boko Haram fighters were set free after undergoing one of the schemes. A few days before, the group had released footage showing the execution of five aid workers.
It is not clear whether the defections will dent the capabilities of the jihadists. Defections on a similar scale in 2019 failed to yield tangible battleground results, said Bukarti.
About 35,000 people have been killed since Boko Haram launched its insurgency in northern Nigeria in 2009. The violence subsequently spilt into Chad, Cameroon and Niger.
In 2014 the group made global headlines by kidnapping 276 schoolgirls from the northern Nigerian town of Chibok. More than 100 are still missing.
One of the captive Chibok girls was among the group who surrendered to the Nigerian military, said General Nwachukwu.