Boko Haram insurgents have devised a new means of using “unscrupulous middlemen” to crudely sell stolen cattle at the Gamboru cattle market in Maiduguri with proceeds used to fund terror activities, Borno Governor, Kashim Shettima, has said.
Speaking yesterday while inaugurating a new management team made up of representatives of the Nigerian military, police, the Department of State Service (DSS), civilian JTF and government officials, Shettima said the team was mandated to take full charge of the market and henceforth scrutinise sources of all cattle, delayed slaughtering of certified cattle for claims.
He also explained that government placed a ban on imports of cattle through various routes as well as sale of dry meat across the state. Shettima, whose message was read by the Secretary to the Borno State Government (SSG), Usman Jidda Shuwa, at the inauguration of the new management committee, said the insurgents had resorted to the new order because they now lack capacity to attack and loot banks, towns and other traditional methods of sourcing funds for the murderous activities.
“Our security agencies have reasonably established that most of the cattle being traded at the markets were the direct proceeds of cattle rustling perpetrated by Boko Haram insurgents which were sold at prohibitive costs to unsuspecting customers through some unscrupulous middlemen who use underhand ploy to deliberately disguise the transactions as legitimate.
“The money realised from such transaction would then be channelled to fund the deadly activities of the insurgents. Consequently, the insurgents, through these nefarious transactions, felt they had discovered new sources of resuscitating their already battered and degraded infrastructure, with a view to recommencing their atrocities, which have since been irredeemably halted by the Military.
“We are indeed very grateful to the gallant and professional resourcefulness of our security agencies who, through their relentless pursuit of the insurgents and incredible intelligence gathering techniques, have identified the nature and type of serious security threats posed by the trading activities at these cattle markets and appreciably staved off such threats by foreclosing all commercial transactions at these places,” the governor said.
He also said the discovery led to the closure of the temporary closure of the market by security agencies in the state. As a result of the situation, Shettima said he was putting in place a committee made up of representatives of the military, the Nigerian Police Force, the DSS, youth volunteers involved in counter insurgency operations popularly known as the Civilian JTF, government officials and credible representatives of unions of traders and butchers to takeover the markets so that activities in the market would resume due to public demands for meat but under a sanitised system.
