This year, the existence of the Boko Haram sect would be 11 years in Nigeria and despite the efforts and money spent to battle it, the war appears not yet won. TOPE SUNDAY writes.
Though founded in 2002, the activities of the Boko Haram insurgency started fully in 2009 after the death of its leader, Mohammed Yusuf, in controversial circumstances. Today, the sect has become a monster that an average Nigerian dreads.
Sect’s activities in summary
According to reports, after a peak in Boko Haram–related violence in 2014 and 2015, the number of casualties attributed to the group fell dramatically. The Nigerian military—with assistance from Benin Republic, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger Republic pushed Boko Haram out of several provinces in north eastern Nigeria, but the group retains control over some villages and pockets of territory and continues to launch deadly suicide attacks and abduct civilians, mostly women and children.
In February 2018, more than one hundred students were kidnapped by a faction of Boko Haram known as Islamic State West Africa. They were released a little more than a month later. The conflict has been primarily contained in the north, particularly in Borno state, but has displaced millions of people in the region. In June 2018, the Nigerian Army announced that two thousand internally displaced people were to return home.
The casualties
According to Global Conflict Tracker, the insurgents from 2011 till date, has killed more than 37,500 people, and displaced an estimated 2.5 million people in the Lake Chad Basin; while nearly 244, 000 estimated Nigerians are refugees.
The former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai, who spoke at an international conference on “Insurgency and counter-insurgency in Nigeria: critical perspectives on Boko Haram,” in Abuja recently, also confirmed that the Boko Haram sect “poses serious threats to Nigerian national security.”
He had said, “The Boko Haram insurgency which started as a weak, disorganized, loosely coordinated and inchoate movement, mutated to pose serious threats to Nigerian national security; and has been tagged as one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history and phenomenon has escalated into the worst internal displacement. By 2013, it has already caused the displacement of over 2.3 million people within and across the various borders in Lake Chad Basin.”
The military onslaughts
Amidst the criticisms against the military in their fight against the sect, the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, and the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, relocated to the North-east to coordinate the military operations against the insurgents.
The Chief of Army Staff’s relocation to the North-east appears to be yielding results as 105 insurgents fell to the supremacy of the Nigerian Troops during the last Saturday’s confrontation at Buni Gari village in Gujba local government area of Yobe state.
A statement by the Nigerian Army, which quoted the commander, Sector 2 OPLD (Operation Lafiya Dole), Brig.-Gen. Lawrence Araba, as briefing the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, on the incident, said the recent success was as a result of an intelligence report which revealed a plan by Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists to attack the village.
“Based on intelligence received about the plan by the terrorists to attack Buni Gari, our troops swiftly intercepted and engaged the criminals in fierce battle that led to the killing of 105 Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists as well as the capture of several arms and ammunition from the criminals.
“Initial situation report reported that 10 terrorists were neutralised. However, following exploitation by our troops, a total of 105 Boko Haram/ISWAP criminals are confirmed to have met their waterloo as a result of the encounter,” the statement quoted Araba as telling Buratai.
Borno, Gombe govs’ call for new strategy
The governors of the Borno and Yobe states, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, and Mai Mala Buni, respectively, whose states are the epicentres of the unrest being unleashed on Nigerians recently called on the federal government to explore other options to defeat the sect.
On his part, Prof. Zulum, who spoke in Abuja during the three-day international conference on “Insurgency and counter-insurgency in Nigeria: critical perspectives on Boko Haram” called for the adoption of political options to end the crisis, arguing that more of non-kinetic strategies must be pursued to end the insurgency.
The governor, while acknowledging that the North-east had witnessed significant security improvement, said the activities of the insurgents would “soon be over.”
He said, “There is need to explore political options in finding lasting solutions to the crisis. More of non-kinetic strategies must be pursued.
The establishment of the North East Development Commission is a fundamental sustainable development initiative that gives a comprehensive framework for the post-conflict socio-economic recovery, stabilisation and development of the state and sub-region.”
The Yobe state governor, Buni, who also spoke at the event, called for a new approach to defeat the Boko Haram insurgency, saying that the current approach, which, according to him, was military-centric, had not achieved the desired results.
Buni, who was represented by his special adviser on security affairs, Brig.-Gen. Dahiru Abdulsalam (retd.), said, “I am also convinced that at the end of conference, new approaches to defeating the Boko Haram insurgency would be recommended for the consideration of the federal government. I am saying this because the current approach, which is demonstrably military-centric, did not appear to provide the results we all desire.
“Our people in the North-east often wonder why the Nigerian military that was adjudged to be among the strongest in Africa in finding it hard to defeat a handful of insurgents. Probably the answer lies in the current strategy which needs to be reviewed.”
Agawai’s admonitions
A former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Martin Luther Agwai (retd.), in his recommendation on how Boko Haram sect would be defeated, advocated that the soldiers fighting the insurgency in the north-east should not be at the war theatre for more than two years, and argued that if they were not rotated after two years, they would become ineffective on the battle field.
“If you have taken somebody to a theatre, you know the challenges. There is no sleep because when the enemy is coming, he doesn’t tell you which way he would take. You have kept somebody on his toes for a long period. Two years to me is the maximum but after that, the person will fail, inefficiency will set in, and he would have challenges of thinking about his family and his loved ones.
“If you just station them too long in the theatre, the animal in human beings will come out. And that is why you will see people reacting out of worry,” he said.
Agwai also called for the split of the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) into two for effective coordination of the national security, and made a case for the creation of the office of national security coordinator.
He argued that the office of the NSA as presently constituted is political and has many issues to contend with.
“This is my view; the National Security Adviser has so much on his hands, and to coordinate the DSS, NIA, all the other intelligence agencies together will be too much a thing. So, it is either you have somebody of the same status who is the coordinator or somebody known… Remember that the NSA office is a political office and he can leave anytime. But when we have a professional person who had grown to that place based on his profession, then he can stay longer and he can help the organisation grow better.”
A university teacher’s take
A Professor at the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA), Kaduna, Usman A. Tar, in an interview with Blueprint Weekend, said the proliferation of small arms is responsible for the rising cases of criminality and insurgency in the country, and called for the total ban of arms importation into the country.
He said, “Proliferation of small arms which was heightened in the 1990s after the end of Gulf war gave rise to insurgency and criminality across the world, and Nigeria is facing its own share of criminality and insurgency. Small arms as I said is a game changer. It gives the criminal the wherewithal to confront the formal state.
“The only way to stop this is to deny them (insurgents) access to small arms. In Nigeria, we don’t produce small arms, we import them. We have banned the importation of rice, and then if we can put a ban on the importation of small arms legally or illegally, then, the problem will be solved.”
