Boko Haram Forced to Produce Biodiesel from Groundnut Oil as Fuel Scarcity Bites

Violent Islamist sect, Boko Haram has resorted to producing biodiesel from groundnut oil to run it’s motor bikes as perennial fuel scarcity hits the insurgents hard.

Villagers in some communities still occupied by the terrorist group said the Islamists were also prepared to pay huge sums of money for gallons of petrol.

The country has been experiencing an acute shortage of petrol with long queues of vehicles in filling stations.

Despite several promises the government has failed to supply enough fuel to meet demands.

“Boko Haram were paying outrageous sums to get fuel and the incredible profit margin made young men defy the risk and take fuel to them,” said the source in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.

“The cutting off of fuel supplies has badly crippled Boko Haram and that has been made possible by blocking all identified supply routes and the crackdown on the suppliers,” he told AFP.

Black market operators sell fuel to the group for as much as N50,000 to N70,000 for a 25-litre jerrycan of fuel.

But the group has also found another way of meeting its fuel needs.

Ya-Mairam Ya-Malaye, a 57-year-old mother of eight who was among hundreds of women and children abducted from the town of Bama in September 2014, and who managed to escape Boko Haram last week, told the AFP that the group is now producing its own fuel from groundnut oil.
According to her, the group has devised a crude way of adding salt to oil extracted from groundnuts to make biodiesel for their motorcycles to mount attacks from their Sambisa Forest enclaves in Borno.

“They confiscate the groundnuts (that) farmers in villages in and around Sambisa cultivated all year-round from their farms and irrigation fields,” she explained from Maiduguri.

“They crush the nuts using diesel-powered grinding machines to extract the oil to which they add salt to make it light and combustible.”

Source: The Vanguard