Two Boko Haram commanders, 49 others surrender to Army in Borno

• Police free 76 hostages in Kaduna, injure fleeing bandits
• Bandits lay siege to Makurdi-Lafia road

Two Boko Haram commanders and 49 other terrorists have surrendered to the Nigerian Army in Borno State.

The commanders, Ba’a Usman and Alhaji Ari, laid down their arms on November 20, 2022 to troops of Operation Hadin Kai (OPHK) patrolling Damboa Local Council.

A counter-insurgency expert, in the Lake Chad region, Zagazola Makama, disclosed in Maiduguri, yesterday: “Preliminary investigation of the military revealed that the insurgents came out from Sambisa forest. The terrorists had been hiding and waging campaigns of terror from the forest.”

According to him, over 90,000 terrorists and their families in the North East have already surrendered to the Army.

Military sources in Maiduguri said: “The sustained onslaught on the terrorists with kinetic and non-kinetic approaches led them to massively surrender. The state government has already established four camps for their rehabilitation and integration into communities.”

IN a related development, Kaduna State Police Command has said security operatives have rescued 76 kidnap victims in Giwa Local Council and inflicted injuries on their captors as they flee from heavy fire from the police.

The police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mohammed Jalige, said the victims were passengers from Sabon Birni Local Council of Sokoto State travelling to different destinations.

“On November 18, at about 2300hrs, the Divisional Police Headquarters in Giwa received reports that a large number of bandits blocked a section of Funtua-Zaria road at Gulbala area of Giwa and abducted many commuters,” the police spokesperson said.

On the strength of the report, he said, a combined team of police and military were immediately mobilised to the location with clear directives to dismantle the road block, root out the miscreants and rescue any victim they might have abducted.

LIKE the notorious Abuja-Kaduna highway, commuters now dread the Makurdi-Lafia road because of bandits, who have laid permanent siege to the road in the past few weeks.

The Makurdi to Lafia road is one of the major roads that link the North and the South of Nigeria.

Armed robbers and kidnappers on the road, whose activities were, hitherto, restricted to nighttime, have become more daring, as they now operate in broad daylight.

On September 18, 2022, media aide to the Peoples Dmocratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate for Benue State, Andy Nomsoor, escaped death by the whiskers. On his way from Lafia to Makurdi by 3.00p.m., their vehicle ran into an ambush on Yelwata and was forced to stop.

Nomsoor said the timely arrival of security men at that point saved them. The security men escorted them and other trapped vehicles out of the place. But he said that six people lost their lives at the scene.

According to Principal Special Assistant to Governor Samuel Ortom on Project Monitoring, who is an indigene of Yelwata, one of the hot spots, the people now live by the mercy of God, as robbery, abduction and unprovoked attacks on communities along that route have become a daily occurrence.