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There are indications that Nigeria has brought in hundreds of mercenaries from Eastern Europe to strengthen its war against militant Islamic group, Boko Haram.

The Eastern European mercenaries have joined their South-African counterparts and Nigerian soldiers fighting the insurgents.

According to Reuters, rumours about the use of foreign mercenaries against the Islamist militant group gained substance this month when pictures surfaced on Twitter showing Armoured Personnel Carriers vehicles on a street in Maiduguri, Borno State.

In the picture, which appeared on Twitter on March 6, a white man in a khaki, a tee-shirt and body armour, was standing beside a heavy-calibre machine gun on top of one of the sand-coloured APCs as the column drove through the streets at dusk.



A West African security source said the foreign fighters were being paid around $400 a day.

A South African defence contractor confirmed that South African company leaders were involved in the deployment of the mercenaries.

An Abuja-based diplomat said the South Africans were backed by soldiers and hardware from the Eastern Europe in an alliance against Boko Haram .

“It’s an incoherent mix of people, helicopters and random kit from all sorts of different sources, but there is an element of internal cohesion from the Nigerian Army,” the diplomat said.

“It appears to be a desperate ploy to get some sort of tactical success up there in six weeks for the electoral boost,” the diplomat added. The numbers of soldiers involved were in the “low hundreds; he added.

Editor of African Armed Forces magazine, John Stupart, identified the troop carriers as Reva III, manufactured by a Pretoria-based company called Integrated Convoy Protection.

After reports of South African military trainers first surfaced in the Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper in January, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapise-Nqakula, made clear her displeasure, saying any deployment would be illegal under 1998 anti-mercenary laws.

“They are mercenaries, whether they are training, skilling the Nigerian defence force, or scouting for them. The point is they have no business to be there,” she was quoted as saying in domestic media.

The minister added, “The police have a responsibility to ensure that, when they come back, those people are arrested and the [National Prosecutions Authority] has a responsibility to charge them. There are consequences for going out of the country and provide [sic] any form of military assistance as a mercenary, not as part of the deployment by government.”

South Africa bans its nationals from participating directly in hostilities for private gain. Georgia, seen as a major source of mercenaries, has laws before parliament criminalising participation in a broad range of foreign military activities.

The appearance of foreign private soldiers comes four months after Nigeria’s ambassador to the United States, Ade Adefyue, said Washington was not helping the struggle against Boko Haram, and had failed to share intelligence and sell Nigeria the weapons it needed.



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Lol.

This news is very genuinely fake.

Chai.

I want to fight too