Nigeria’s hunters turn sights on Boko Haram
‘The military bring us along because we know these places – smartphones and Google maps are no use out there’
‘Boko Haram are in the bush all the time and they don’t often wash. Some of my men can actually smell them’
ARMED with ancient flintlocks passed down by their forefathers, the bush hunters of north-east Nigeria have chased big game through the forests since colonial times, and before.
From gazelles and monkeys to crocodiles and hyenas, their quarry used to be as plentiful as any in Africa, although these days they lament that some wildlife is largely gone.
There is one particular species, however, that they are all too keen to hunt to extinction – the Boko Haram fighters who have turned their stalking grounds into a war zone.
Stretching across thousands of square miles of Sahel, the forests have become the militants’ main operating base in recent years, offering the perfect cover to build training camps and stage mass kidnappings.
Among the hostages who have languished here are the Chibok schoolgirls, whose kidnap in 2014 sparked the global #bringbackourgirls campaign, and 110 schoolgirls from the town of Dapchi, released last week after a month in captivity.
Yet while Boko Haram may know the terrain better than the Nigerian army, no one knows it as well as hunters like Bunu Mustapha Bukar, 47, who shot his first rabbits here as a young boy. Hence his decision, along with other members of his local bush marksmen club, to join forces with the army for Nigeria’s biggest and most dangerous game hunt ever.
The hunters’ front-loading muskets may be no match for Boko Haram’s Kalashnikovs, but their ancient tracking skills and knowledge of every forest trail can prove as useful for intelligence gathering as any CIA eye-in-the-sky.
“The military bring us along because we know these places well – smartphones and Google maps are no use out there,” Mr Bukar told The Daily Telegraph in an interview at his club HQ in the north-east’s main city, Maiduguri, where a trench now rings the city to fend off Boko Haram attacks. “But human beings are much more dangerous to hunt than animals – you have to be very careful.” Dressed in a mix of traditional and camouflage attire, Mr Bukar’s comrade Hassan Mohammed shows how they blend historic and modern fieldcraft.
His weapon is a cap-firing homemade musket known as a “Dane Gun”, named after those brought in by colonial-era Scandinavian merchants, while attached to the barrel is a wolf-claw talisman for good aim.
But along with the peacock feather in his hat and the snakeskin charm on his belt – packed with secret herbs said to make the wearer bulletproof – he has a Usb-powered bike light strapped Gopro-style to his forehead.
“When you hunt animals it is fun, but when you hunt humans, anything can happen,” he said. “One young Boko Haram fighter tried to stab me, but he couldn’t cut me because I have the protection of God.”
The hunters’ role as vigilantes began centuries ago, when tribal rulers relied on them to report sightings of fugitives and robbers hiding in the forests.
Today, they perform a similar function in Boko Haram’s main stronghold in the Sambisa Forest, an area the size of Belgium that stretches towards the mountains of neighbouring Cameroon. Hundreds of Nigerian troops have died here in ambushes over the years, and among the more superstitious soldiers, stories abound that the place is cursed.
“When Boko Haram attacks in the Sambisa, any soldier who runs even a mile away will get completely lost and not be able to recognise where he is,” said Mr Bukar. “We often get roped in to help military officers that have disappeared. We also know all the bush roads, so the soldiers never have to take the same route twice. That makes it harder for Boko Haram to plant mines or stage ambushes.”
The hunters have quickly adapted their tracking skills to pursue their latest prey.
Rather than baboon droppings or hyena pawprints, they search for motorbike tracks, man-sized foxholes, and treetops with broken branches that have been used as lookout posts.
Other telltale signs include discarded sim cards – Boko Haram commanders frequently change their phones – and empty packs of Tramadol, a morphine-like drug also popular with State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).
A keen nose also comes in handy. “Boko Haram are in the bush all the time and they don’t often wash,” added Mr Bukar. “Some of my men can actually smell them.”
Hunting fraternities all over north-east Nigeria are now helping the army against Boko Haram. Last year, some 10,000 of them gathered at an annual oath-taking ceremony where they swore to banish the insurgents from the Sambisa forever.
So far, though, vows have proved easier than deeds.
Although Boko Haram has been pushed out of much of its territory in the past three years, last month’s kidnapping in Dapchi shows it is still a capable guerrilla force.
And despite the hunters’ magic charms, when fighting Boko Haram, the old jungle law of “kill or be killed” still holds true.
“We have lost too many men to count,” said Mr Bukar.
“About 30 hunters I know personally have died in battles with Boko Haram – two of them just in the last fortnight.”