Over recent months, Nigeria has suffered from a chronic lack of petrol and diesel due to limited refining capacity and a reduction in imports. This has led to soaring prices, long queues at filling stations and has badly affected electricity supply as the majority of the population source their power from private generators.
However, undaunted by the challenge, Boko Haram has resorted to refining vegetable oil and making diesel out of it. Acting director of army public relations, Colonel Sani Usman, said that soldiers uncovered one of Boko Haram's refineries where it is making the diesel during a recent raid in Borno State.
Col Usman added: “Troops of 7 Division Special Fighting Forces attached to 25 Task Force Brigade Damboa, at a checkpoint, arrested a suspected Boko Haram terrorist, Abubakar Bello and 6 other suspects carrying 28 gallons of Turkey brand of vegetable oil, eight bags of flour, 130 crates of soft drinks and two bags of sugar. In addition, five mobile telephone handsets, one external hard drive and five flash drives, two national identity cards and the sum of N70,000 were recovered from him.
"Preliminary investigation discovered that the terrorists now dilute the vegetable oil with other substances to produce diesel to power their generators. In continuation of clearance operations of the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists, troops of 7 Division in Operation Lafiya Dole have been making tremendous progress in their various areas of operational responsibilities."
He added that troops of the 21st Brigade of the Nigerian Army carried out clearance operations at Bulari, Tori 1, 2 and 3 during which they successfully cleared the general area of remnants of Boko Haram terrorists. According to Col Usman, during the operation, 10 terrorists were killed and one was captured alive and troops rescued seven civilians and recovered a Volkswagen Golf car, 15 bicycles and various bags of foodstuffs.
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