Security operatives have intercepted and arrested at least nine women allegedly married to senior Boko Haram insurgents while attempting to relocate from the notorious Alawa forest enclave in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State to border communities in Kebbi State.
According to Premium Times, the women were apprehended in two separate incidents across Tegina and Agwara towns.
Their arrests followed a reported directive from their insurgent husbands, top commanders loyal to the Mallam Sadiku-led Boko Haram faction, amid rising military pressure and growing rivalry with the Dogo Gide group.
On Friday, three of the women were nabbed in Tegina, a town known for the mass abduction of over 100 Islamiya pupils in 2021.
Eyewitnesses said the women, believed to have boarded a commercial vehicle from Pandogari or Birnin Gwari, drew attention after a heated argument broke out among them.
A local source said, “One of them, from Kagara, changed her mind about continuing the journey and began arguing with the others. She said she wouldn’t go beyond Tegina, and their fight attracted passers-by who alerted the police.”
The women were subsequently taken into custody and reportedly confessed they were instructed by their Boko Haram husbands to head to Kebbi State. “They said more women were on their way,” the source added.
The following day, security forces in Agwara, a border town in Niger State, intercepted another group of six women. Five were seen carrying infants, while the sixth was reportedly heavily pregnant.
Among them was a woman from Alawa, a once-thriving community now overtaken by insurgents after military forces were dislodged. A relative confirmed to reporters that she had been missing since February 14, 2024, when she and 24 others were kidnapped en route to a market.
“She’s one of those abducted that day. For now, I can’t say much about her condition. She remains in police custody,” the family source said.
The Sadiku-led faction, which initially operated as a sleeper cell in the Alawa forest reserve, has reportedly grown its influence by recruiting fighters, sometimes forcefully, from the Gbagyi communities in Shiroro LGA.
Among the known cases:
Zainab (abducted at 17 in 2021) was married to Muhammad Kabeer;
Mary, married to a commander named Ismail;
Two girls named Azeema, married to Mallam Shafi’i and Suleiman, respectively;
Khadija, forcibly wed to a fighter called Umar.
The insurgents, along with their wives and children, reside in zinc-roofed makeshift camps spread across Kugu, Maganda, and Dogon Fili areas of the forest. These camps also host informal Islamic schools believed to serve as radical indoctrination centres.