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| olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com |
The Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima on
Monday stirred the hornet’s nest when, after visiting President Goodluck
Jonathan at the State House, he said: “what we are being confronted with is
that we are in a state of war. It is what I came to update Mr. President
(about). The sooner we stop playing the ostrich and rise up to the challenges
of the day and marshall all resources towards stopping the antics of Boko
Haram, the better for all of us.”
Shettima was not done: “The bottom line is that we need more
resources. In all fairness to the officers and men of the Nigerian Army and
police, they are doing their best given the circumstances they have found
themselves in. But honestly, Boko Haram are better armed and are better
motivated than our own troops. And believe me, I am an eternal optimist as I
have always said but I am also a realist.
Given the present state of affairs,
it is absolutely impossible for us to defeat Boko Haram. Anybody who is
following events in this country can attest to the fact that they have a very
smooth sail in running over communities, killing people. Have we ever succeeded
in thwarting any of their plans? They went to Konduga and did what they wanted
to do; they held sway for over four hours before they left. They were in Kauri,
Izge and I don't blame the Nigerian military, honestly. We the leaders should
be held responsible for our failure in leadership.”
However, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on
Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, was quick to dispute Shettima’s claim on the
grounds that what obtains in Borno is not conventional warfare but guerrilla
warfare with all its unpredictability. For that reason, Okupe said it is “wrong
for anyone, Nigerian or foreigner, to assert that our armed forces cannot defeat
the Boko Haram insurgents or to insinuate that the insurgents are better armed.
We believe strongly that the statement made by the Borno State Governor, Alhaji
Kashim Shettima, that the insurgents are better armed than our military is
based purely on a civilian perception of the situation at hand.”
I honestly don’t see any reason why the presidency would
join issues with Governor Shettima over his apt summation of what is happening
in that part of the country where body bags, not only of civilians but indeed
of our soldiers, are mounting on a daily basis. The fact on the ground, as
Shetima pointed out, is that the Boko Haram insurgents are already winning some
strategic battles. The challenge of the moment should be a resolve by the
authorities to win the war.
Fortunately, at a most critical time like this for our
nation, we have a new Army Chief who comes to office with impeccable
credentials. Major General Kenneth Tobiah Jacob Minimah who, as commandant of
the Nigerian Army School of Infantry, overhauled the school’s curriculum and
introduced the Armoured Personnel Carrier course for the military trainees is
acknowledged as the first Nigerian officer of the rank of Brigadier-General to
have ever participated in a parachute jump.
Whether as Commanding Officer 149 Battalion or as Commanding
Officer, Nigerian Battalion 2 in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone,
Minimah’s service record bears him out as a courageous, charismatic,
disciplined and rugged officer who is reputed with an “outstanding commitment
to the welfare of his troops”. While those attributes will serve him in the
coming weeks as the army confronts the Boko Haram challenge with renewed
vigour, the fact also remains that Minimah, who doubles as the elected
President of the Nigerian Boxing Federation, already has his job cut out for
him.
Whatever may be the beef of the presidency about Governor
Shettima’s statement, nobody can deny that he has a better understanding of the
capacity of our armed forces based on what transpires in his state in the
confrontation with Boko Haram. But it is important for us to put the situation
in perspective. Shetttima said that our armed forces are doing their best in
the circumstance in which they find themselves but that the Boko Haram
insurgents have superior weapons and are better motivated. Now, let us deal
with the issue.
While the total number of personnel in our army today is
about 100,000, that of the Navy is about 15,000 and the Airforce 12,000 so
Nigeria has one of the lowest ratio in terms of number of military men to
population in the world. Yet that same institution is tasked not only with
protecting the territorial integrity of the nation but also saddled with
internal security. From combating armed robbery to dealing with the menace of
kidnapping and now terrorism, military troops are deployed in no fewer than 29
states across the country today. To compound the problem, our policemen for
whom those responsibilities are meant are now guarding politicians, bank
executives, Lebanese businessmen etc., leaving the task of protecting even
their own barracks to soldiers!
However, it must be said that the size of troops has stopped
being a parameter for measuring the operational capability of armies all over
the world. It is the deployment of technology to reduce boots on the ground
that now counts. That is the only reason why the Israeli army is able to hold
the entire armies of the Arab world to ransom at any time. This is the reason
why Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have in the last five years spent
so much money on training a hitech military and equipping it with
state-of-the-art materials.
The tragedy is that Nigeria is not investing in the relevant
technologies neither are we trying to be the best conventional army in black
Africa on the basis of our population. More disastrously, the intelligence
input into our military operations is rather low hence our formations are
frequently overwhelmed. The classic example was the attack last year on
Maiduguri airport and the air force base even with a state of emergency in
place. The attack involved over 500 Boko Haram insurgents driving in a convoy
of open trucks across distances overnight. Most of them returned to base after
destroying the military reconnaissance aircraft with which they had previously
been monitored.
As Governor Shettima said, the enemies that our soldiers
confront are not only motivated, given that they fight for an ideology for
which they are prepared to die, they are also heavily funded otherwise how did
they acquire anti aircraft guns? The possibility of local collaborators among
the political elite is also not ruled out given some security reports about the
nature of funding of the Boko Haram activities, all of which put the lives of
our military men at risk. To compound the situation, the Boko Haram insurgents
who operate mostly on motorbikes are experts at guerrilla engagements and they
have become so professional that they almost always carry away their wounded
and the dead. In contrast, the fighting spirit of our men seems to wane given
reports that the bullet wounds on some of the recent victims reveal that they
were shot in the back, which could only mean the soldiers were killed while
running away!
But do we blame them? There have been reports of unpaid
allowances, secret burials of fallen soldiers (which once drew the anger of
Senate President David Mark) and all manners of ill-treatment that do not show
those who are prepared to lay down their lives on behalf of our nation are
appreciated for the sacrifices they are making. Such is the tragedy of the
situation that today there is pressure on the army headquarters with regards to
posting. Nobody wants his/her relation to be posted to either Borno or Yobe
that is now considered a one-way ticket to death.
The situation is not helped by the fact that we seem to have
concluded that the police lacks the capacity to tackle the challenge of
internal security and have thus consigned them to handling domestic chores even
when they have four times the number of our army. Since Boko Haram insurgents
invade in number without minding how many casualties they would suffer in the
process, it is difficult to defeat such enemies who are already prepared to die
without a coherent strategy.
I think the presidency misses the point by attacking
Governor Shettima who was only expressing his opinion while it is sad that
nobody has said anything about the 25 innocent female students of a secondary
school who were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents and who could by now have
been turned into sex slaves. No doubt, the Boko Haram challenge is a difficult
one for our armed forces to deal with. For the fact that the insurgents are
misguided Nigerians, the standard operational requirement that the military
protect 'friends' and destroy 'enemies' does not quite apply. But it is a
challenge we must face squarely and we need to equip our army with such weapons
as anti aircraft guns, assault helicopters, BMG and GPMG.
As an insurgency, the objectives of Boko Haram run directly
counter to the heart and soul of the Nigerian federation as a secular democracy
but one which has to be robust enough to be inclusive with diversity and
multiplicity as its sources of strength. To that extent, Boko Haram is an evil
that we must all collectively fight and defeat as a people. But to do that
would require the collaboration and support of the people in their axis of
operation and we are failing on that count. Therefore, what has been missing in
the approach of the Federal Government so far is a heart and mind angle.
Going forward, our troops deployed to contain the insurgency
in the North East must be armed in equal measure with weapons that are superior
to those of the insurgents and, very crucially, ingredients of humanitarian
nationalism like food, medicines, building materials and a reservoir of
kindness that should reassure the populace that Nigeria cares and can protect
them. Admittedly, this is an odd and difficult combination to summon in a
dangerous military situation. But the ability to do just that is what distinguishes
civilized democracies from barbaric banana enclaves. We are engaged in a
contest, not of firepower alone but of inclusive nationalism.
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