This archive report was first published on 1 July 2019.
Published on July 1, 2019, more than 2,000 people protested in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, calling for a ban on the anti-Boko Haram CJTF militia they accused of abuses after the killing of a rickshaw driver.
The protest erupted hours after a rickshaw driver was shot dead near a militia checkpoint. The protesters blocked major roads in the Suleimanti area of the city and set fires, causing chaos despite pleas from police and military officers.
"We want the CJTF to be banned from the city because of the abuses we suffer in their hands," said Suleimanti resident Bukar Saleh. "They have become a law unto themselves and are treating us badly. And now they have started killing us," Saleh added.
The CJTF militia tried to stop the demonstration, attacking protesters with batons and arresting scores of them. The militia insisted that the victim was shot for failing to stop at a checkpoint during night-time curfew hours.
However, the CJTF head in Suleimanti area, Babakura Abba-Ali, said the driver's refusal to stop raised the suspicion of their men, and one of them took him down, believing he was a Boko Haram terrorist on a mission.
The CJTF emerged in 2013 as a vigilante group in response to Boko Haram's deadly attacks in Maiduguri. The decade-long Boko Haram conflict has killed at least 27,000 people and forced some two million to flee their homes in Nigeria alone.
