A video published on social media Wednesday shows Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorists shooting dead five humanitarian workers, Nigeria’s Premium Times reported.
The 35-second-long video shows “five hooded [and] armed” Boko Haram jihadists “standing behind five [blindfolded] abductees … kneeling before them.” According to the newspaper, “the gunmen who carried out the killing said their victims were aid officers working for nongovernmental organizations” in northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram’s stronghold.
In the video, one of the armed Boko Haram terrorists delivers a short speech before the aid workers are summarily executed. According to the report, “an unidentified voice speaking in [the northern Nigerian language] Hausa” says:
This is a message to the infidels who are using you to cheat and turn our people into unbelievers. You should know that your employers are just using you to achieve their aims, but they don’t care about you. That’s why whenever we abduct you, they don’t care about you.
Continuing, the jihadists warn Nigeria’s Christians:
Our advice for you is that you should repent and turn to God, or else we shall continue to waylay and abduct you all in all the routes that you traverse. And if you don’t heed to our warning, what is about to happen to these five aid workers would also be fate that will befall you too.
“At the end of the speech, one of the gunmen ordered [the terrorists] to [shoot] the abducted aid workers,” the Premium Times writes, adding the newspaper “was unable to immediately determine the identities of the five executed aid workers.”
On Wednesday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari released a statement identifying the humanitarian workers as members of “[Nigeria’s] State Emergency Management Agency, [global non-profit] Action Against Hunger, [Nigeria’s REACH] International, and International Rescue Committee who were abducted a month ago.”
In Wednesday’s statement, Buhari said he “condemned the murder of the humanitarian workers” and pledged “that his administration would implement measures to prevent a recurrence of such tragedy.”
Buhari has faced criticism from domestic and international critics alike for his failure to meaningfully respond to Boko Haram’s deadly jihadist terror campaign. Since 2009, the terrorists have killed at least 36,000 people in northeastern Nigeria and displaced about two million more.
Boko Haram has recently taken advantage of government-mandated lockdowns during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic to mount a resurgence in its northeastern stronghold of Borno State. The jihadists have launched strategic attacks on vulnerable villages and state military units throughout the region in recent months.
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