BOKO HARAM NEW TACTICS EXPOSED, CHILDREN ARE NO LONGER TARGETS

National security mat¬ters dominated discussions on Wednesday in the military and the National Assembly as The Defence Headquarters (DHQ), which opened up on the Boko Haram, alerted Nigerians that they no longer need children to act as agent by wearing bombs, they have developed new tactics by catching and

luring youths with soft loans.

These loans are programmed to fail in their repayments, thus making the youths indebted to the group and vulnerable to forced re¬cruitments.

In a statement issued in Abuja, the DHQ spokesman, Brig-Gen. Rabe Abubakar, said the target groups of the insurgents are artisans like butchers, traders, tailors, beauticians and other vocational entrepreneurs who are mostly youths.

He said: “In this clandestine dispensation, Boko Haram ter¬rorists have resorted to providing loans to young entrepreneurs and artisans in the North East as a way of inducing them for recruitment.

“The major targets of the unho¬ly business engagement are youths in the North East, especially the butchers, traders, tailors, beau¬ticians and other vocational en¬trepreneurs who could be easily enticed with such loans without paying attention to sundry inher¬ent dangers associated with the ac¬ceptance of such goodies from this satanic group or unfamiliar sourc¬es.

“After such loans, the benefi¬ciaries are given the option of ei¬ther joining the group or risk be¬ing killed if they fail to pay the loan as at when due, whereas the pay¬ment has been surreptitiously pro¬grammed to fail by the benefactor, the Boko Haram,” he said.

The DHQ noted that the Boko Haram group, having been effec¬tively decimated and degraded, has remnants or surviving splin¬ter groups who appear desperate to recruit more people into their rank and file as a result of the sus¬tained onslaught against them by the military.

It advised the general public, especially those in the North East, to be wary and conscious of vari¬ous tactics of the desperate Boko Haram.

“They should be guided to avoid loans or financial assistance from non-conventional sources but from conventional financial insti¬tutions such as banks, organised trade unions or institutionalised savings and loans establishments.

“Acting otherwise may lead to painful and untimely death from the blood-thirsty Boko Haram ter¬rorists,” the DHQ warned.