A security analyst and senior fellow at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Extremism Policy Unit, Bulama Bukarti, has warned that the notorious terrorist group Boko Haram is increasingly exploiting major social media platforms, including TikTok, to spread its propaganda and recruit followers.
Bukarti issued the alert on Sunday during an appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he highlighted the group’s evolving tactics.
His disclosure comes just days after Senator Ali Ndume (Borno South) revealed that Borno State had lost 100 soldiers and 280 civilians to Boko Haram attacks in the past six months.
Bukarti, a longtime researcher on extremist groups, further cautioned that the insurgents are now leveraging video clips and live streams to propagate their ideology, marking a dangerous shift in their digital warfare strategy.
“Right now, when you go on TikTok, you will see Boko Haram members’ accounts. They host live programmes and live shows where they propagate Boko Haram’s ideology; They justify the group’s violence, which they do in the Hausa language. They field questions from the audience and answer comments that are written” he said.
He further disclosed that, “even this week, there was a Boko Haram member who posted a 10-minute video on TikTok attacking me for speaking up against the escalating violence of the group. But it’s not just that. We know that Boko Haram now operates unmanned drones. They surveil military formations in the northeast with unmanned drones.
“What we have seen over the past three months was over seven Boko Haram attacks on super camps, on Nigerian military super camps. In Sabon Gari and lots of other places, they overran the camps. They dispersed the military, killed some, captured others and stole weapons, food, medicine and other equipment from those areas and fled into the bush.”
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