By Rafiu Ajakaye
LAGOS (AA) – Several people in the Nigeria's restive northeastern Adamawa State have reportedly been killed for refusing to join the ranks of the Boko Haram militant group, a spokesman of a local vigilante group has said.
"We have a report from Madagali local government area that many people are being killed by the militants for rejecting or turning down their call for people to join them," Jubrin Gunda told the Anadolu Agency on Sunday afternoon.
"Apparently frustrated by the news of military closing in on them, the militants started killing the people for refusing to join them," he said.
"They are desperate for recruitment now because their ranks are being depleted," Gunda suggested.
Madagali, a local government in Boko Haram-wracked northeast, has never completely been free of militants' control since it was first captured early this year.
Gunda said militants had suffered "heavy casualties" after being ambushed by army troops who had repulsed the insurgents' attempt to capture Bulabulin, a village in the neighboring Borno state.
"More than 90 percent of the militants who advanced on Bulabulin were killed by troops," said the local vigilante. "The few who survived the military ambush had returned to Bama."
Bama is located about 60kms from Maiduguri, the provincial capital of Borno.
"Bama is now a ghost town inhabited only by the militants who are just few in numbers because of the several attacks on them," Gunda told AA.
"This explains why they are so desperate to recruit more people," added the vigilante spokesman.
Nigeria continues to battle a five-year insurgency in the country's volatile northeast.
An emboldened Boko Haram recently stepped up its militant activity, seizing several areas across Adamawa, Borno and Yobe – the three states worst hit by the insurgency – declaring captured territories to be part of a self-styled "Islamic caliphate."
Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima recently said that, this year alone, more than 3,000 people had been killed and over two million displaced in Borno due to the insurgency.
Outlawed in Nigeria, Turkey and the United States, Boko Haram first emerged in the early 2000s preaching against government misrule and corruption.
It became violent after the death of its leader in 2009 while in police custody.
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