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Many Soldiers, Civilians Feared Dead As Boko Haram Terrorists Attack Military Base, IDP Camp In Borno

A yet-to-be-ascertained number of persons, including soldiers, have been killed by militants of the Islamic State-backed faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā'at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da'wah wa'l-Jihād, in Borno state.

Multiple security sources told SaharaReporters that Ngoshe town, under Gwoza Local Government Area of the state, came under highly coordinated and simultaneous attacks around 4am on Wednesday, and the terrorists operated till daybreak.

During the incident, the militants invaded a military base, 82 Div TF Battalion under 26 BDE, and launched an assault on a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the community.

A source added that the terrorists also ransacked the community, looking for soldiers they claimed may be hiding. The gunmen also burnt armoured tanks and military vehicles and made away with unquantifiable ammunition.

“Another attack in Ngoshe town, under Gwoza Local Government Area of Borno State, by gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram terrorists, today, Wednesday, 4th of March, 2026,” a military source said.

“The terrorists overran a military base, 82 Div TF Battalion under 26 BDE, around 0400hrs, with their large numbers, burnt the camp with all the military equipment, and later advanced toward an IDP camp close to the military base and attacked the IDP.

“The terrorists also burnt all the buildings in the IDP camp. They then went to the community and started searching all the houses to check if there were soldiers hiding within the civilians’ houses.”

The source added that many Nigerian soldiers and civilians were killed, while others fled into the bush. According to him, the gunmen came in different groups and could not be counted.

“Up till now, we don’t have the actual numbers of soldiers and civilians killed, as more bodies are being found,” he said.

This comes a few days after many soldiers, including a Major, Ibrahim Mairiga, were killed in an attack on the Forward Base operations at Banki junction, along Bama/Gwaza Road in the state.

“An attack at Forward Base operations at Banki junction around 0400hrs by gunmen suspected to be Boko Haram terrorists led to the death of an Army Major and many other soldiers this morning. Their corpses are being transferred to 7 Div military hospital in Maiduguri,” a high-ranking source previously said.

Last month, another military base in Jakana, Kaga Local Government Area of Borno State, was attacked. During the assault, the gunmen burnt armoured tanks and military vehicles and made away with unquantifiable ammunition.

“An attack occurred this morning, 06/02/2025, at an Army outpost along Maiduguri/Damaturu Road, Jakana town, by Boko Haram terrorists, with many casualties recorded on our side,” a source had told SaharaReporters.

A few days before the attack, seven military personnel, including a newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel, were killed in an ambush by the terrorists.

SaharaReporters had reported that Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed was leading a troop of soldiers from Maiduguri to Damasak, Mobbar Local Government area of Borno State, when they came under attack by the insurgents on Monday, January 26, 2025. Military sources said the terrorists used explosives and heavy gunfire.

Apart from the dead bodies recovered, many other soldiers were seriously injured, while a yet-to-be-ascertained number of personnel are also still missing.

The author, a Nigerian journalist and graduate student in journalism here in the United States, sought my help to amplify his family's anguish and desperate search for help. If you read this, please help in any way you can. You can reach him through his email at the end of the article. Thanks!

By Haruna Mohammed Salisu


Three weeks ago, my uncle did not come home.

He had left at dawn, the way he always does. A poor man moving through the world before it fully wakes, returning to a family that waits for him. He did not return. Gunmen took him from the road, into a forest that stretches from Taraba, Plateau, and Bauchi, and they have kept him there ever since. As I write this, he is still in that forest. He is still alive. And we are running out of time.


My uncle is not a man of wealth or influence. He holds no government position, owns no land beyond what feeds his family, has no cousin in Abuja to call. He is a man who has spent his life in the honest arithmetic of survival — working, providing, asking for nothing beyond safety and the right to return home at the end of each day. He is the kind of man who, in a just world, the worst of the world would leave alone.

The worst of the world did not leave him alone.

When they first took him, the kidnappers were calculating. They had watched him. They knew what he owned, what he earned, what his family could plausibly raise. A man who has spent his life negotiating between hunger and enough does not present as a profitable target. So they held him. Days became a week. A week became two. Two became three. And then, without warning, they changed their demand.

They are now asking for N100 million.

I want you to sit with that number for a moment. At Nigeria's minimum wage, N100 million is 119 years of earnings. My uncle does not have 119 years. A subsistence farmer in Northern Nigeria might earn N400,000 in a good harvest year. To raise N100 million through farming alone would take 250 uninterrupted years of harvest. Our family does not have 250 years. We have days. And they are passing.

We did not go public immediately. When he was first taken, we made the difficult decision to stay quiet. And that is because the moment kidnappers learn that a hostage has a relative abroad, the ransom inflates.

I am in the United States, completing a graduate degree. My being here is not wealth. But perception is the currency of the kidnapping economy, and we could not spend it carelessly. We waited. We prayed. We negotiated the way poor families in Nigeria are forced to negotiate — alone, in whispers, with nothing.

They found out anyway that I’m in the US. They whispered to him that they know his nephew is in America. The ransom did not go down.

The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics recorded approximately $1.42 billion paid in ransoms between May 2023 and April 2024. Billions of naira. Thousands of families sitting exactly where we are sitting. This is not a rare tragedy. In Northern Nigeria, it has become a regular feature of life. It has become the particular cruelty of an armed economy that preys on the poor because the poor are accessible, because their names do not appear in newspapers, because their grief does not slow traffic in Lagos.


My uncle's name is not in any newspaper. He is a quiet man from a village that no one outside of it has heard of. He has never asked for anything except to live in peace.

I am his nephew. I am a journalist. I have documented exactly these kinds of kidnap for ransom in Nigeria. I know how it feels. I'm feeling it now.

So I am doing the only thing left available to me. I am asking for help. Publicly. On the record.

If you have any connection to the Nigerian security services, to community and religious leaders, to anyone who operates in or near the forests, please help. Act. Help us bring a poor, decent, hardworking man home to his family before what little time we have runs out.

My uncle and 9 other captives deserve to come home. Not because of who I am. Because of who he is: a man who never harmed anyone, who worked every day of his life, and who is sitting in a forest tonight wondering why the world has gone so quiet.

Please. Help us make some noise.

Haruna Mohammed Salisu publishes WikkiTimes and writes this from the United States.

RichBoy247:
.
Your governor is controlling your state, yet you ran to Lagos