Forty-four people in Nigeria have been sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for financing the jihadist militant group Boko Haram. The trials of 10 other people have been postponed, the country’s counter-terrorism agency said on Saturday.
The defendants appeared before four specially constituted courts set up on a military base in the town of Kanji, in the central state of Niger.
The sentences ranged from 10 to 30 years, all with hard Labour, a spokesperson said. Nigeria has been conducting mass trials for terrorism-related offences since 2017 and has secured convictions against 785, official sources say.
Boko Haram’s campaign of violence began in northeastern Nigeria in 2002 and has since spread to neighboring countries including Cameroon, Chad and Niger, killing tens of thousands and displacing millions. The strict Wahabbi group opposes the Westernization of Nigeria, which it blames for the country corruption.
Its tactics include suicide bombings and armed assaults, including an attack on the UN building in Abuja.
In 2014, Boko Haram kidnapped 276 schoolgirls in Chibok and burned down a government college, killing dozens of schoolboys who were trapped inside.
Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram – which has caused havoc in Africa’s most populous country through a wave of bombings, assassinations and abductions – is fighting to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.
Boko Haram promotes a version of Islam which makes it “haram”, or forbidden, for Muslims to take part in any political or social activity associated with Western society.
This includes voting in elections, wearing shirts and trousers or receiving a secular education.
Boko Haram regards the Nigerian state as being run by non-believers, regardless of whether the president is Muslim or not – and it has extended its military campaign by targeting neighbouring states.
Since the Sokoto caliphate, which ruled parts of what is now northern Nigeria, Niger and southern Cameroon, fell under British control in 1903, there has been resistance among some of the area’s Muslims to Western education.
Many still refuse to send their children to government-run “Western schools”, a problem compounded by the ruling elite which does not see education as a priority.
Against this background, charismatic Muslim cleric Mohammed Yusuf formed Boko Haram in Maiduguri in 2002. He set up a religious complex, which included a mosque and an Islamic school.
Many poor Muslim families from across Nigeria, as well as neighbouring countries, enrolled their children at the school.
But Boko Haram was not only interested in education. Its political goal was to create an Islamic state, and the school became a recruiting ground for jihadis.
