Borno to shut IDPs’ camps, as troops kill Al-Barnawi’s successor

Borno State Government has announced its intention to shut all camps that are holding thousands of internally displaced persons by the end of the year.

The state governor said this on Friday, citing improved security in the state.

The conflict between the insurgents and Nigeria’s armed forces has also spread to Chad and Cameroon and has left about 300,000 dead and millions dependent on aid, according to the United Nations.

Borno, the epicentre of an ongoing Islamist insurgency, shares a border with Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

It has for more than a decade been the foremost outpost of an insurgency led by Islamist group Boko Haram and later its offshoot Islamic State for West Africa Province (ISWAP).

Speaking after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja, Borno governor Babgana Zulum said security had improved in the state so much that those living in camps in the state capital Maiduguri could return home.

“So far so good, Borno State government has started well and arrangements have been concluded to ensure the closure of all internally displaced persons camps that are inside Maiduguri metropolis on or before 31st December, 2021,” Zulum said.

But humanitarian groups say most families are unwilling to return to their ancestral lands especially in the northern parts of Borno, which they deem unsafe.

Zulum said Borno state authorities would continue to repatriate Nigerian refugees from a camp in Cameroon.

Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau died in May and Nigeria says hundreds of fighters loyal to the Islamist group have been surrendering to the government since then.

Buhari has in the past months claimed his government was gaining ground on the insurgents.

Last week the country’s top general said ISWAP leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi was dead, without giving details.

In another development, Nigerian troops have reported killing the man who succeeded Al-Barnawi.

The National Security Adviser (NSA) to the President, Major General Babagana Monguno (rtd), confirmed this to State House correspondents on Thursday in Abuja.

He explained that Al-Barnawi’s successor, Malam Bako, was killed alongside a prominent member of ISWAP on Tuesday by soldiers fighting terrorists in the north-east region of the country.

“The fact again is that the armed forces – the land forces have done an excellent job because, in the span of one month, we have been able to take out the leadership of the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) – that is Abu Musab Al-Barnawi,” Monguno said a week after the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, announced the death of Al-Barnawi.

“Two days ago, the man who succeeded him, one Malam Bako, one of the prominent leaders of the Shura Council of the Islamic State of West African Province, was also taken out. They (the terrorists) are also contending with a leadership crisis.

“You know these things are also accompanied with inherent issues of trust, conflicts, mutual suspicion, and other things.

“So, the operations being conducted by the armed forces in the Northern parts of the country put a lot of pressure on the Islamic State of West African Province, Boko Haram, and also the tangential group known as Islamic State in the Greatest Sahara.”

The NSA spoke with reporters at the end of a security meeting presided by President Muhammadu Buhari and attended by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha; Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari; Minister of Defence, Major General Bashir Magashi (rtd), and some other members of the President’s cabinet attended the meeting.

General Irabor led the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Farouk Yahaya; Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Zubairu Gambo, and other security chiefs to the meeting.

They are Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Oladayo Amao; Director-General of the Department of State Service (DSS), Yusuf Bichi; and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ahmed Rufai Abubakar.