Vigilantes: Nigeria’s next security problem?

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: In 2013, thousands of young men formed a rag-tag militia and rounded up Boko Haram members in Maiduguri, northeast Nigeria, then handed them over to the military.

The Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), as it later became known, was instrumental in driving the militants out of the strategic city.

Since then, the ranks of the “vigilantes” have swollen to about 20,000 across the remote region.

Armed with home-made muskets, swords, axes, slingshots and bows and arrows, they man security checkpoints and even accompany the military on operations against the terrorists.

“If it wasn’t for the CJTF (Maiduguri) would have long fallen into the hands of Boko Haram,” said Saad Abubakar, a community leader in the Borno state capital.

“They are a fearless band of committed young men who know Boko Haram members and the terrain very well,” he said.

But with a relative calm returning to the northeast as a result of sustained counter-insurgency operations, one question is increasingly being asked: What to do with the vigilantes?

Some have already been implicated in allegations of human rights abuses and there are fears that with no alternative employment, some could turn to a life of crime.

“What next after the war is our concern,” said Abba Aji Kalli, the Borno state coordinator of the CJTF,

“Some vigilantes may decide to become criminals. The government should think twice before it’s too late.”

The CJTF is largely made up of uneducated and unemployed young men, who receive no regular wage and are instead reliant on hand-outs from sympathetic locals.

Many lost their jobs in farming, herding, fishing and trading as a result of the conflict, which has left at least 20,000 dead and displaced more than 2.6 million others since 2009.

Umar Usman, 32, used to be a trader of food spices and was one of 700 vigilantes trained in handling weapons.

He said he has no other way of earning a living and agreed that crime could be a way out for some.

“Going by the current trend, we are heading toward a repeat of the Bakassi Boys scenario,” he suggested.

The Bakassi Boys were a militia in Nigeria’s oil-rich south, who were formed to fight armed robbery and other crime in 1998.

Politicians used them as violent enforcers during the 2003 elections but they turned to crime, including oil theft and kidnapping for ransom, when they were disbanded.

In Maiduguri itself, the ECOMOG, which took its name from the West African peace-keeping mission during the Liberian civil war, was a similar gang for hire.

They were used during the 2007 elections to intimidate political opponents and allow electoral fraud through threats and violence.