The incursion of a new terrorist group into the old Sokoko State, made up of Sokoto, Kebbi and Zamfara, is troubling. It is a clear and present danger. And the authorities, both political and military, should treat it so.
Reports say the group, called Lakurawa in local parlance, who are now holed up in the Marake and Tsauni forests in the Tangaza and Gude areas of Sokoto, are already spewing out of local control. They are believed to have imposed their hegemony over the local communities, imposing levies on the locals and even flogging them under the guise of enforcing sharia. What audacity! To think that they are ‘renegades’ from Niger Republic, Chad and Mali, now stalking our territory in imperial and magisterial audacity, riding roughshod over our people. This is how all terrorists begin, gradually grow wings and begin to take territories, if they are not quickly checked.
We should quickly take a cue from how the Boko Haram sect metamorphosed from a peaceful religious group into one of the deadliest terrorist groups with a global niche. The Boko Haram elements, members of an Islamic sect in Borno axis of the Sahel, used to carry themselves with the gracious piety of the clergy who are too holy to hurt even a fly.
But the otherwise pious, docile-looking elements turned violent with the speed of a rattle snake, with the extra-judicial killing of their pioneer leader, Mohammed Yusuf, in 2009. The administration of the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua then immediately rallied the might of the military to contain them and check further incursions.
The respite, however, did not endure after the former president’s painful death in 2010. The now dangerous sect, still baying for blood, intent on avenging their leader’s death, took advantage of the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s costly delay in clipping their wings to recoup and relaunch a ferocious campaign that has today sent tens of thousands to their untimely graves and displaced millions of hapless victims.
The Lakurawa elements’ incursion is no less dramatic. They were said to have been harmless herders about six years ago when the local communities, now bearing the brunt of their ferocious activities, deliberately courted them. The background story of their emergence as a terror gang has it that the locals in the Tangaza and Gudu areas of Sokoto had raised an alarm over the suspicious activities of a group of herders operating in the Marake and Tsauni Forests. A police investigation at the time had concluded that the armed group, known locally as Lakurawa, were merely herders and not violent.
Although the police suspected that the group was heavily armed, they described them as seasonal visitors from the neighbouring Niger Republic. The official narrative by the then police commissioner, Murtala Mani, after engaging with traditional and religious leaders in the affected area, was that the herders had left with their families, cattle, camels, and donkeys.
The Defence Headquarters, however, recently declared that the so-called herders are “a new terror group” affiliated with jihadists in the Sahel, a region that accounts for sizable chunks of global terrorism deaths.
“The terrorists took advantage of the gaps in cooperation between both countries(Nigeria and Niger Republic) and exploited the difficult terrains to make incursions in remote areas in some Northwestern states to spread their ideology,” said Edward Buba, the Director of Defence Media Operations.
The military, therefore, declared nine members of the group wanted. They are: Abu Khadijah, Abdurrahman, Dadi Gumba a.k.a Abu Muhammed, Usman Shehu, Abu Yusuf, Musa Wa’a, Ibrahim Suyeka, Ba Sulhu and Idris Taklakse. According to the police, the terrorist group now operates in areas like Tangaza, Gudu, Ilela, Binji, and Silame, and is believed to have entered the border communities from countries like Niger, Chad, and Mali.
The terrorists are said to preach in local Hausa and Fulfulde, imposing rules and levies on local communities. Sometimes, they “help” locals fight other terrorist groups operating in their territory to gain absolute control and wider influence.
Following their incursion about six years ago, according to local sources, the roving Lakurawa criminal organisation established camps, which it called Darul Islam, around the Gwangwano, Mulawa, Wassaniya, and Tunigara areas along Nigeria-Niger border areas. The sect has grown from less than 50 members to over 200, with young men aged between 18 and 35. It embraces unorthodox practices and esoteric interpretations of the Qur’an.
Who really are the Lakurawas? As noted earlier, they are believed to be herders who suddenly turned militant in the wake of the Malian crisis. Their presence in the communities along the Nigeria-Niger border in Gudu and Tangaza areas of Sokoto, analysts posit, goes beyond the search for food and water for their cattle which they had been doing for years. Around October 2018, about 200 jihadists were believed to have arrived in the Gudu and Tangaza area of Sokoto from across the border in Niger. Locals say they were “herders, light-skinned, speaking Arabic and Fulfulde languages” from Mali.
For nearly a decade now, the northwestern region has been a haven for rural terrorists. They have emptied villages and driven farmers from their farms, controlled a thriving kidnap-for-ransom enterprise that has disrupted the livelihood of the largely farming communities and impoverished families across the region.
The people of Wassaniya, Tabaringa, Mulawa, and Jina-Jini are getting their big doses of terror. In the rural communities of the region where these terrorists hold sway, there is little or no government presence. And most of the time, they are left at the mercy of the marauding terrorists. Therefore, some traditional authorities in these areas invited the Lakurawas to defend them against the ravaging bandits.
Only a few members of the group were actually invited to protect the communities against banditry, but they later mobilised other members of their group to terrorise and introduce strange laws into the communities. They were believed to have requested for money to purchase arms for their newly recruited members to fight the rampaging Zamfarawa bandits. They were obliged. This was how the people unwittingly courted trouble for themselves.
One of the residents told a national daily that members of the group were invited to rescue a kidnap victim. He added: “The locals were initially happy with their coming because of the way they sacked bandits in their communities but their refusal to consult their leaders and hand over recovered cattle as well as the way they were forcing people to give out animals as Zakat, which they used to take to their countries made us suspicious and decided to report the matter to constituted authorities.”
According to reports, the first major attack by the Lakurawas was recorded on August 10, when they attacked a military base in Sokoto, killing three soldiers and setting a Hilux vehicle on fire. The group’s present mode of attack is against the government’s security forces, armed vigilantes and armed terrorists. They mostly spare civilians, conscripting them to obey radical Islamist beliefs – what they define as God’s laws.
Upon invitation, they seemed to have protected ungovernable communities desperate to get security. The armed gang would later get to Gande, and Getta-rana in Silami local government. Many Lakurawa fighters are seen in communities like Raka, Gudu, Silami, Labsani, Mada, preaching to the civilian population of the areas to pay and give alms (zakat) and obey the laws based on God’s injunction!
This is the way terrorists surreptitiously spread tentacles and entrench themselves. They are busy building cells. They are always meticulous and methodical in their surreptitious moves to take swathes of territories. They sell porkies and dummies under the guise of religion and good community relations. They are said to be exploiting the lacuna that resulted from the abrupt end of the Nigerian-Niger Republic military cooperation owing to the military coup in Niger Republic. Troops from both sides used to constantly patrol the Nigeria- Niger Republic border before the coup to check terrorists and other heinous elements.
It is gratifying that the military is already tackling the new terror gang. That is how it should be. But they(military) should not relent because those terrorists are very resilient. This particular group is set to be “extra-dangerously armed.” So, they possess the uncanny capacity to quickly recover from attacks. The only way to clip their wings is to bombard them with relentless fire, both aerial and ground, to dismantle their lethal arsenal. Our galant military should not give them any respite.
We should not allow them to entrench and become another bother. The military is already stretched thin tackling Boko Haram and their variants, murderous bandits and killer-herdsmen, most of whom have been terrorizing hapless communities. A lot of the implacable bandits and egregious herders are already seeping down south killing, maiming and kidnapping for ransom. We should not add Larukawa to the list.
