“If we left Boko Haram when Abubakar Shekau was still alive, our lives would be over. We would be killed because he thought we knew all his secrets and being free might mean we would divulge them. So, he would have you killed or kill you himself.”

These were the chilling words of Sadiq Abubakar, a former insurgent who surrendered to the Nigerian government nine months ago.

He spoke to RNI reporter Zainab Alhaji Ali about the 10 years he spent in the Sambisa Forest with the Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’way Wa’l-Jihād (JAS), better known as Boko Haram.

“I was born in Maiduguri and lived in the Kawar Maila suburb. I was a truck driver and at the time I had two wives. In the early days, I knew and had contact with the Boko Haram men and the group’s founder, the late Mohammed Yusuf. I became involved with them and left Maiduguri with my two wives to start living with them in Sambisa Forest. I stayed with them for 10 years.

“When I joined the insurgency, I was appointed the rank of munzir, a commander, responsible for a battalion of 500 to 600 men. The rank is higher than an amir, who is like a war head. People consider being an amir as someone who is very important. But an amir is not even a war commander, he is chosen by a commander who will tell him what needs to be done, so it is not a senior status,” said Abubakar.

“I’ve been to several wars, more than 50 to 60 attacks, as a commander, and I used to drive the armoured tank.

“From the onset, I belonged to the [Abubakar] Shekau faction of Boko Haram and Shekau told us not to interact with ISWAP [Islamic State West Africa Province] members. He commanded us to kill them whenever we came across one because ISWAP members did not accept him as a leader and considered him an infidel. He said there was no reason to have a relationship with them, except to fight them. We knew we should never question our leaders – if you questioned them or did not do what they told you, you would definitely get yourself in trouble and, most likely, end up dead,” he said.

“When ISWAP killed Shekau [who died during a skirmish with the group on May 21, 2021; he killed himself by detonating a suicide vest], top ISWAP members met me in person and tried to convince me to work with them as we did before the [now much stronger and more violent] ISWAP split from Boko Haram. But I declined. I gathered my men and decided we would leave the forest. I said to myself: ‘Since God has saved my life up to this stage, I would rather just gather my men and leave than join ISWAP’. And so we left.

“I did not leave only because Shekau was killed. If we left when he was still alive, we would be killed because he thought we knew all his secrets and being free might mean we would divulge them. So, he would have you killed or kill you himself,” he said.

“I stayed at Kuba in the Sambisa Forest – there are many settlements in the forest led by leaders, such as war heads and commanders. If we were about to launch an attack, it would be announced to the commanders and they would select fighters. The members took turns to be among the fighters, which was necessary because everyone had to participate and stay loyal to Boko Haram and the war.”

Abubakar said there were prisons in the forest, including underground ones, markets and a hospital, where doctors who had been abducted were forced to treat sick insurgents.

“At the time when the attack was launched and the Chibok girls were abducted by our people [2014], I was sick so I could not participate but once we had the girls I was assigned to give them water and fill the drums with water. I took it to them by tricycle.

“The girls were many, I did not count. But, as time went on, many of them got married to the insurgents, especially those who did not want to go back home to their parents because they were, by that stage, indoctrinated. Staying with the insurgents had made the girls act mildly and they never questioned what they were told to do.”

Abubakar said there was a time when JAS superiors ordered him and his men to attack the Giwa Barracks in Maiduguri because a lot of their members were detained there. “We did not hesitate. We launched the attack and freed our men,” he said.

“During our stay in Sambisa, the town people used to bring us food, clothes and other commodities. We had brainwashed them, too, and they supported us. We even used their livestock to plough land in the forest. We used to dig a hole and put money in it. The town people knew where we the hole was and they would come and pick up money for commodities, which they bought for us in town. We mostly got our money during attacks in the town and picked up anything we thought would be useful. We also got ransom money that was paid to release a person, for example the Chibok girls.

“The insurgents claimed to be religious and that they were teaching us to be the same. But when one of my wives gave birth, I named the child after my father. I was incarcerated in an underground prison for two months simply because they said my father was an infidel and naming my son after him had led to the punishment I received.”

Abubakar said it was then that he decided he could not continue to follow their doctrines.

“I began to point out the inaccuracies of the doctrines of our leaders. At last I was able to make some of the men understand and convinced them that the doctrines we were following were the doctrines of the bush and that the doctrines of Mohammed Yusuf were different. Gradually, after Shekau was killed by ISWAP, we left the forest.

“But it was in the forest we realised that the doctrines had been changed to suit the actions of the Boko Haram leaders. Right now, there are two types of the insurgents, the Murjiya and the Hawarij. The Hawarijs are Shekau’s people and the Murjiya belong to Mamman Nur’s ISWAP faction.”

Abubakar said Nur’s faction questioned Shekau’s bombing of mosques, schools or markets. He said it was because Shekau loved playing the leadership role. The Nur faction said Nigerians and Maiduguri people were not infidels but were fellow religious people who shouldn’t be killed. But Shekau said he could not submit to their way of thinking and he would in no instance pay allegiance to people who broken away under his leadership.

“Under Shekau we would kill civilians because many of them took up arms by joining the civilian joint task forces. Shekau praised the men and women [who often wore suicide bombs] who died for the cause. He said they would go straight to paradise when they died. He encouraged members to carry out suicide bombings in public places without ever questioning the order.

“Often, the Nigerian Army used to attack us and we fought back. The rule of war is that if they kill us, we will kill them, too. We reported all casualties after the fight to our people.”

Abubakar said there were “only a few Boko Haram members in the bush these days”.

“I call on them to surrender. After I surrendered, I was instrumental in the surrender of around 240 to 250 armed insurgents. If I called them, they listened to me and surrendered.”

He said ISWAP had taken in “a lot” of Shekau’s men into their ranks but still did not have enough gunmen and they were not professional warmongers. But they were willing to die for the cause, as I and the others were under Shekau’s reign.

“After Shekau’s death, a man named Salabe, who was earlier appointed by Shekau as his successor, took over the leadership but then another named Bakura, who was in the Lake Chad area, shot Salabe while he was asleep and took over the leadership. But the Budumas in the region refused to recognise his leadership and everything is now in a confused state.

“It was after I left the forest that I realised we had been totally brainwashed and I regretted all the things we did. It was when we came here that we could scrutinise our past actions. It was like looking at a movie.”

Abubakar said he had surrendered with 1,000 people. He had taken them and his four wives – while with the JAS he married two more women – to Nigerian soldiers.

“We approached them and raised our hands.  They brought us into Hajj Camp here in Maiduguri where we were held for nine months. Then we were given ₦100,000 and a discharge certificate. We were discharged and everyone was left to his or her fate.

“Right now, there are some of those who surrendered with us who, after being discharged, returned to the insurgents because it is not easy to farm and do business. The superiors in the forest would help out whenever you had a financial crisis. They would give us ₦10,000 or more. When we were discharged the government gave us ₦100,000 but they did not help us find employment so that we could cater for ourselves and our families. Life is hard in the city. We have to rent a house and buy food. That made some decide to go back to the insurgents in the forest. But I will never go back, no matter what.”

He said he phoned more than 200 people in the bush and they surrendered. “I buy recharge cards, but right now I cannot because life is already too hard here and I cannot afford it. I am appealing to the government to help us either with jobs or businesses to survive so that we can feed our families. We also want to enrol our children into school. But even buying food is expensive here in Maiduguri.

“But being among people in the city is far better than in the bush because we can live and interact freely. But we still need the government to support us. If life is too hard here, some more surrendered insurgents might return to that way of life. We need to avoid that. We do not want to discourage them. In fact, we want more insurgents to surrender.”

AISHA SD JAMAL