Kabiru Adamu, security, risk management and intelligence solution consultant, Friday, hinted that a terrorist group, Ansaru, is currently recruiting people in their numbers in Kaduna and Niger states.
The security expert spoke on Channels Tv’s Daily Sunrise programme.
“Terrorist enclaves are being set up between the boundary communities of Kaduna and Niger states,” he said, noting that the situation is worrisome and calls for serious concern and needed urgent attention from the government.
Adamu said, “The worrisome aspect is that they are recruiting actively within those locations. In several communities there, what they do is that they use little influence sometimes offering residents little money or protection and residents out of fear or perhaps because they don’t have any choice, embrace that olive branch they are offering to them.
“Before you know, the various participants of a person in a terrorist group start exhibiting themselves. It could be either silent membership or active support, it could be in form of informants.
“This is well established. As far back as November last year, we started documenting this.”
Noting that Ansaru broke out of Boko Haram in 2012 because of ideological differences, the security expert said members and leaders of the terrorist group are from Northwest Nigeria.
He said they started their operation in Kano and parts of Katsina.
“You will recall in 2014 when a French engineer was abducted in Katsina, then another engineer was abducted in Kano and in Birni-Kebbi, a Briton and an Italian were abducted. All of these were related to the activities of the group,” Adamu said.
He further said that the main ideological difference between Ansaru and Boko Haram was the methodology with which the parent group was trying to achieve its objectives which is through suicide bombing.
“They felt that suicide bombing was not the way they want to embrace because people were killed at random.
“What they did was abductions, specifically targeting internationals and then they will now make political demands.
“When they abducted the French engineer in Katsina, one of the demands was that France should repeal the law on the use of veils by Muslims in France,” Adamu said.