The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has deployed two of its new Turkish Aerospace T-129 Atak helicopters, ISR, and drones to a new base at Katsina’s Umar Musa Yaradua Airport, it was revealed on 18 November when Minister of Defence Mohammed Badaru Abubakar visited the facility.
The two helicopters, two Alpha Jets, and two King Airs were seen in media coverage of the visit that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said was to the Air Component of Sector 2 of Operation ‘Fansan Yamma’, which was recently established to counter criminal gangs in the northwest of Nigeria.
Abubakar told journalists at the base that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had also been deployed, although these were not displayed.
The MoD identified the facility as the NAF’s 213 Forward Operating Base (FOB) when Abubakar visited it in June while it was being used to support the now-superseded Operation ‘Hadarin Daji’, although no aircraft were shown at that time.
In his latest tour of the northwest, Abubakar also visited Sokoto International Airport, 267 km to the west, where he said an annex is being established and some aircraft involved in ‘Fansan Yamma’ will be based. “One of the platforms is here and we will bring some more as promised,” he said.
The NAF previously did not have a base capable of supporting aircraft in Nigeria’s four northwestern states, with the closest being at Kaduna, 270 km south of the new FOB in Katsina and 355 km southeast of Sokoto International Airport.
Last month, the Nigerian Defence Headquarters declared a so-called herders are now “a new terror group” affiliated with jihadists in the Sahel, a region that accounts for sizable chunks of global terrorism deaths.
“The terrorists took advantage of the gaps in cooperation between both countries and exploited the difficult terrains to make incursions in remote areas in some Northwestern states to spread their ideology,” said Edward Buba, the Director of Defence Media Operations.
The military, therefore, declared nine members of the group wanted. They are Abu Khadijah, Abdurrahman, Dadi Gumba a.k.a Abu Muhammed, Usman Shehu, Abu Yusuf, Musa Wa’a, Ibrahim Suyeka, Ba Sulhu and Idris Taklakse. Now, the police have claimed that the terrorist group operates in areas like Tangaza, Gudu, Ilela, Binji, and Silame, and is believed to have entered the border communities from countries like Niger, Chad, and Mali.
Following their incursion about six years ago, the roving Lakurawa criminal organisation established camps — which it called Darul Islam — around the Gwangwano, Mulawa, Wassaniya, and Tunigara areas along Nigeria-Niger border areas. The sect has grown from less than 50 members to over 200, with young men aged 18-35. It embraces unorthodox practices and esoteric interpretations of the Qur’an.
The Lakurawas were herders who suddenly turned militant in the wake of the Malian crisis. Their presence in the communities along the Nigeria-Niger border in Gudu and Tangaza areas of Sokoto goes beyond the search for food and water for their cattle which they had been doing for years. Around October 2018, about 200 jihadis arrived in the Gudu and Tangaza area of Sokoto from across the border in Niger. Locals say they’re “herders, light-skinned, speaking Arabic and Fulfulde languages” from Mali.
