At the age of 14, Halima Audu, was held captive at a Boko Haram camp where she witnessed several girls being sent to detonate explosives in crowded places such as markets. She said even a nine-year-old girl was sent on a suicide mission.
“They put explosives on her and she went with it. On the day of this particular mission there were three of them - all of them were young girls,” she said.
Scheduled to strap on a suicide vest herself as bride #3, Audu managed to escape.
Exploiting children as child soldiers and training them to become ruthless killers remains part of the modus operandi of northeast Nigeria’s two main jihadist groups, Boko Haram and the ISIS-linked Islamic State's West Africa Province, ISWAP.
Known for the mass abduction of children, especially girls, both armed groups are waging a violent campaign to introduce strict Islamic rule in Nigeria.
Between June 2014 when Boko Haram deployed its first female suicide bomber and February 2018, the group carried out a record 240 suicide attacks by females, according to the United States-based Combating Terrorism Center.
The attacks killed some 1,200 people and injured 3,000 others. More than 465 women and girls were deployed or arrested in connection with suicide bombings within the same period.
A report recently publishsed by United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, backs up those figures. In its report, it claims that more than 8,000 girls and boys have been recruited and used as child soldiers since 2009 when the insurgency started.
Former Boko Haram captive Audu said she saw boys undergoing military training in the jihadist camp.
Merciless killers
But Boko Haram and ISWAP are not just using boys as child soldiers they also train boys to become merciless killers.
Both Jihadist groups have released videos to show how efficiently the children can kill. A video ISWAP released in January show child soldiers executing three captives, at least two of the captives are believed to be captured Nigerian soldiers. The executions are extremely disturbing to watch.
One video, from rival armed group Boko Haram, shows a child aged about eight execute university student Dalep Daciya. The student was killed a week after Boko Haram fighters abducted him while he was traveling to school.
The Boko Haram video was released on social media and Dalep’s family were pained to see him executed.
“I saw the video, I saw it, I watched it, and I saw the shooting, twice, he shot him twice,” Dalep’s father, David told the Africa Calling podcast, adding that the family has not “seen the dead body let alone bury him.”
Force and brainwashing
The Jihadists are using a combination of force and brainwashing to make children carry out such atrocities like suicide bombings and executions, says Audu.
“Boko Haram said if you detonate a suicide bomb, you will go to paradise,” she says, adding that, they would kill anyone who refused to follow their orders.
Boko Haram and ISWAP are training a generation of dangerous children who will constitute a major security risk for Nigeria in future, says security experts, including Felix Olorunda of the SSV Protection services.
“They are going to be terrorists, that is what they are training them to be,” he said, adding that the only option is to urgently rescue the children and give them re-education.
