Boko Haram has been forced to produce its
own fuel to power its motorbikes because of
an acute petrol shortage caused by a
military squeeze on supply lines.
A senior military source said the Islamists
were paying huge sums of
money for
jerrycans of fuel while a woman who
recently escaped from the group said they
were making groundnut oil into biodiesel.
"Boko Haram were paying outrageous sums
to get fuel and the incredible profit margin
made young men defy the risk and take fuel
to them," said the source in the Borno state
capital, Maiduguri.
"The cutting off of fuel supplies has badly
crippled Boko Haram and that has been
made possible by blocking all identified
supply routes and the crackdown on the
suppliers," he told AFP.
Fuel vendors seeking to exploit the group's
need for fuel could sell each 25-litre
jerrycan for 50,000 to 70,000 naira ($250-
$350, 222-311 euros) each, said escapee
Ya-Mairam Ya-Malaye.
A jerrycan of fuel in Maiduguri costs only
$13.
But the risk of being caught up in a military
aerial bombardment on Boko Haram
positions has forced the vendors to stay
away, said the security source.
Babakura Kolo, a civilian vigilante assisting
the military against the Islamic State group
affiliate in Maiduguri, said the militants
would pay any amount to get fuel.
"It was a lucrative business for the fuel
vendors," said Kolo, who was involved in the
crackdown against Boko Haram suppliers in
the city.
"But we have taken care of them and Boko
Haram are feeling the crunch because they
are out of supplies."
Previous reports have indicated the rebels
are also running low on food.
- Groundnut oil -
Nigeria and its neighbours Cameroon, Chad
and Niger began a concerted fight-back
against Boko Haram in January last year,
recapturing territory lost to the militants the
previous year.
President Muhammadu Buhari has said the
rebels, whose insurgency has killed an
estimated 20,000 people and forced some
2.6 million to flee since 2009, can no longer
fight conventional warfare.
Instead of its trademark hit-and-run attacks
using pick-up trucks mounted with heavy
machine guns, the insurgents have even
mounted strikes on remote villages on
horseback, bicycles or on foot.
Ya-Mairam Ya-Malaye, a 57-year-old mother-
of-eight who was among hundreds of
women and children abducted from the town
of Bama in September 2014, managed to
escape Boko Haram last week.
She said the group has devised a crude way
of adding salt to oil extracted from
groundnuts to make biodiesel for their
motorcycles to mount attacks from their
Sambisa Forest enclaves in Borno.
"They confiscate the groundnuts (that)
farmers in villages in and around Sambisa
cultivated all-year-round from their farms
and irrigation fields," she explained from
Maiduguri.
"They crush the nuts using diesel-powered
grinding machines to extract the oil to
which they add salt to make it light and
combustible."
Boko Haram had been getting fuel from
young men who would bring the petrol to
designated points near Sambisa (forest) for
the fighters to pick, she added.
Ya-Malaye said she was taken to Sambisa
Forest from Bama and moved between
camps as troops pushed further into the
former game reserve in pursuit of the
militants.
The offensives and heightened border
security made it difficult for the militants to
receive deliveries from fuel vendors from
Maiduguri and Cameroonian border towns,
she added.
Source: vanguard
Story by:Adekunle
Comment below,it only take a few steps.
No comments:
Post a Comment