Help! We Are Losing the War Against Boko Haram

By Femi Aribisala
We need to admit the truth; Nigeria no longer has an army worth its
salt. The Nigerian army of today is a pathetic shadow of its glorious
past. This explains why it is proving grossly inadequate at checkmating a
Boko Haram army of some 10,000 men. As a matter of fact, ranged
against the insurgency in the North-East, the army is now staring abject
defeat in the face.
Gone are the glory days when the Nigerian army was at the forefront of
international peace-keeping efforts, only surpassed by Pakistan,
Bangladesh and India. The C.V. of Nigeria single-handedly initiating the
ECOMOG (ECOWAS Monitoring Group) and orchestrating peacekeeping
and peace-enforcement operations in Liberia and Sierra Leone is now in
a dismal state of disrepair.
Coup-proofing the military
The Nigerian contingent sent to Mali in 2012 was disgraceful. It lacked
equipment and training. Assessing their capability, a source told London
Guardian: “The Nigerian army is in a shocking state. In reality there is
no way they are capable of forward operations in Mali- their role is more
likely to be limited to manning checkpoints and loading trucks. The
Nigerian forces lack training and kit, so they simply don’t have the
capability to carry out even basic military manoeuvres.”
Now the chicken has come home to roost with the Nigerian army
deployed against Boko Haram. When you have a military that specialises
in overthrowing civilian governments, you don’t empower it after
civilians finally manage to come back to power after donkey years.
Therefore, it is not surprising that, since the advent of civilian rule in
1999, the Nigerian military has been intentionally starved of funds and
diminished by every successive administration.
Today, it is a shell of its much-vaunted past. From the height of a
350,000 man army during the 1967-70 Civil War, the Nigerian military
now has only 76,000 malnourished men lacking motivation, training and
weaponry. While the military budget has been beefed up in the last few
years of the Jonathan administration, much of this has been pocketed by
the military top brass, as usual.
Counter-insurgency deficit
The earlier plaudits of the Nigerian army were in fighting conventional
wars. But counter-insurgency is something new requiring new sets of
skills, tactics and equipment. Lacking this, the Jonathan administration
declared a classical state of emergency in the North-East, and then
embarked on a scorched-earth military strategy.
Attacks on the innocent; illegal searches and torture; extra-judicial
killings; wrongful and indefinite detention of suspects without trial;
random burning of homes and farms; and revenge attacks on the
innocent was the order of the day. This became a veritable blueprint for
losing the war. As a result, the military successfully alienated the local
population it is sworn to protect; making it all the more difficult to fight
the insurgency.
Western governments would not sell counter-insurgency weapons to
Nigeria given the dismal human rights record of our army. Indeed, the
sale of lethal weapons to Nigeria is specifically prohibited by law in the
United Kingdom because of such concerns. A 1997 law also prohibits
American forces from working with foreign military units that have been
accused of chronic human rights violations.
There is also a problem with sharing highly-sensitive intelligence
information with Nigeria because it is widely understood that the
Nigerian military includes a fifth column of local Boko Haram
sympathisers. The means the Nigerian army cannot even be trusted to
safeguard sensitive information from falling into the hands of the
insurgents.
Politics of insurgency
President Jonathan has been caught on the horns of a dilemma. He is a
minority South-South president facing re-election in 2015. No Republican
has even been elected president of the United States without winning
Ohio. No Nigerian can be elected president of Nigeria without getting a
substantial number of Northern votes. But now a major segment of
Northern leadership is insisting six years of Jonathan presidency is
enough.
This makes the handling of the security situation in the North-East a
very delicate matter if Jonathan is not to lose vital Northern votes and
support. Indeed, it has put the president in a Catch 22 situation. When he
declared emergency rule and clamped down on the insurgents in the
North, his Northern political opponents accused him of genocide. They
maintained his Chief of Army Staff was mischievously from the South-
East. Some even threatened to take the matter to the International Court
of Justice. But when Jonathan soft-pedals on the insurgency, he is
accused of incompetence.
It has not helped that Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, the three states in the
fore-front of the insurgency, are all controlled by the opposition APC
party. In declaring emergency rule, Jonathan was careful to leave their
APC governors intact, as chief security officers of their states. However,
they have not been inclined to cooperate with the federal government
and, until more recently, have tended to see the insurgency as a means
to undermine it.
Resurgent Boko Haram
In the middle of all this, the Boko Haram has gone from strength to
strength. From a rag tag group of ill-equipped local thugs who engaged
in hit-and-run bombings, it now operates with armoured personnel
carriers, rocket launchers and advanced weaponry that match, if not
best, those the Nigerian military has to offer. Indeed, it is Nigerian
military that has now become rag tag, as the Boko Haram has continued
to build up its arsenal of weapons. It even attacks Nigerian police-
stations and military-barracks whenever it needs a new cache of arms.
One of the initial sponsors of the Boko Haram was Muammar Gaddafi,
who wanted Nigeria to be balkanised into a Christian South and a
Muslim North in his bid to promote Libya regional supremacy in Africa.
The decision of the United States and its allies to overthrow him further
succeeded in unleashing radical Islamic terrorist groups in North Africa,
including the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, now armed with
Gaddafi’s cache of sophisticated weapons.
These groups moved down the Sahel from Libya; through Algeria into
Mali and Nigeria, where they have linked up with their “brothers” in the
Boko Haram. Today, the Boko Haram has come of age. In the last few
weeks, it has become so emboldened that it has embarked on a new
daredevil strategy different from its guerrilla warfare of the past. Its
fighters have come out of their hideouts in the Sambisa forest and
Mandara Mountains to establish a foothold for their Islamic Caliphate
right on Nigerian soil; according to the horrific blueprints of the ISIS in
Iraq.
New Islamic Caliphate
Last week Monday, Boko Haram militants seized control of Bama, the
second largest city in Borno State. They put up their flag over it, forcing
an estimated 26,000 of the residents to flee, according to the U.N. Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The remaining residents
were then force-fed with a strict diet of the Boko Haram version of
Islamic law, on pain of death.
They did not stop there, but are also now reported to have taken over
other major towns including Damboa, Gamboru Ngala, Banki and Gwoza.
As a matter of fact, they are now reported to pose imminent threat to
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, which is barely 65 kilometres (40
miles) away from their new acquisition of Bama.
Australian hostage-negotiator, Stephen Davis, who is currently making
waves as a result of some controversial pronouncements, says: “When
(the Boko Haram) attack a town, they empty the treasury of the banks.
That is another source of funding for them. They are gradually
depopulating many villages in the state, taking them over and foisting
their flag.
They are very well organised and becoming very good strategists. By the
time they are done with the villages, they will have a very good base
from where they will launch attacks on Maiduguri, with the aim of taking
it over and proclaiming the caliphate that they desire.”
Army in disarray
Instead of putting up a fight, Nigerian soldiers are reported to have fled
into Cameroon, with the army making a face-saving declaration that it
was a tactical manoeuvre. A recent report by Chatham House, a London-
based think-tank, points out that soldiers in the North-East are bedeviled
by equipment failure, low morale, desertions and mutinies.
The military budget has been increased and increased, but the money
has clearly not made its way to the military rank-and-file in terms of
equipment and supplies. The government is talking of taking a one
billion dollar loan to fight the insurgency. Why would we need as much
as that to fight the Boko Haram? What has happened to all the monies
spent till date? In spite of the huge outlays, the report from the foot-
soldiers remains the same: inadequate weaponry and poor logistics.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s sovereignty is now at stake. An eye-witness reports
that: “In Bama now there is no single police, soldier, civil defence, or
state security service personnel. They have all run away for fear of being
killed, even the civil-servants are not spared from attack, if you are a
government worker they kill you.” Apparently, no less than seven emirs
have fled their palaces in Borno and Yobe States.
New map of Nigeria?
Andrew Noakes of the London Guardian, who co-ordinates a so-called
Nigeria Security Network of Analysts, warns that: “Unless swift action is
taken, Nigeria could be facing a rapid takeover of a large area of its
territory reminiscent of ISIS’s lightning advances in Iraq. If Borno falls to
Boko Haram, parts of Yobe and Adamawa can be expected to follow.
Parts of Cameroon along the border area would also probably be
overrun.”
This means it is wake-up time. The PDP and the APC must stop playing
politics with the Boko Haram. Neither can the insurgency be filed away
until after the election. If we are not careful, the damage would have
been done long before then. Nigeria is in danger of becoming a banana
republic. As Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Assistant Secretary for
African Affairs warns: “The reputation of Nigeria’s military is at stake.
But, more importantly, Nigeria’s and its children’s future is in jeopardy.”