Magnus onyibe
My heart goes out to the families of the slain galant soldiers in Metele, Borno State, and north east, Nigeria. I feel obligated to write this essay because my late father, David Ebiye Onyibe, was a soldier.
As such, l have affection for men and women in uniform who have, for obvious reasons, continued to occupy a special place in my heart. And since l have also only recently, personally suffered the loss of a beloved teenage daughter, Kikaose, l can understand the grief of the families of the heroes who died defending their motherland.
For too long, the military and political propagandists in the present administration have regaled Nigerians with the claim that the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents have been highly degraded if not defeated. But the sad and sordid loss of soldiers in their numbers on November 18 in Metele has exposed the falsehood.
The politicisation of the war on terrorism in Nigeria is absurd and probably responsible for the systematic and insidious attacks on army formations in the north east by terrorists just to put a lie to the false claims of victory by some unscrupulous members of the military high command and garrulous politicians.
For instance, at various times, the military forces under the present regime had claimed to have killed Abubakar Shekarau, the leader of Boko Haram, currently believed to be the world’s deadliest terror group. But each time they made the statement, Shekarau sent video broadcasts to debunk the claim. The evidence adduced by the government in power to justify their claim of having delivered on their election promise to end religious insurgency is that Boko Haram no longer hold territories as it did before the ascension of All Progressive Party, APC, to the throne in Aso Rock villa, seat of power.
Until the current resurgence of terrorists that has left in its trail a conflicting number of soldiers as casualties (39-118 depending on the political leaning of the commentators) exposed their lies, they use to buttress their claim of victory by stating that terrorists are only engaging in sporadic attacks on what they conveniently describe as soft targets.
Given that the cardinal purpose of government is to safeguard lives, is the loss of any civilian or Nigerian armed forces personnel to terrorist attacks not grievous enough to impassion our leaders to empower our armed forces to wage an effective and well-funded war against insurgency?
For sure, Nigerian politicians are not the first or the only ones to exhibit false sense of victory over terrorists. On May 1, 2003, barely one month after the invasion of Iraq by the USA led allied forces in April, the then president, George W. Bush Jnr, declared an end to major combat operations in the war. Unbeknownst to him, lraqi military and Al Queda fighters had melted into the inner recesses of Baghdad to take cover under the pine trees of the Euphrates from where they launched an asymmetric warfare against the invaders.
Since the mainstreaming of the unconventional warfare system during the invasion of Iraq by allied forces in 2003, it has supplanted the conventional warfare or traditional battle ground concept. Just as it is currently the case with Nigerian military, the allied forces who were at that time only used to conventional warfare, were overwhelmed by the terrorists who had suddenly changed the game. Consequently, it cost the USA led allied forces serious loss of lives because they were unprepared for such unconventional warfare. And it was a sort of throwback to the horrific experience that the USA army had in Vietnam, during the Indochina war of 1954/1975.
I’m comparing both because it may be recalled that when the USA joined the civil war between north and south Vietnam, it was confounded by the guerrilla warfare tactics which the Vietnamese had mastered and why American soldiers who didn’t know the terrain can’t forget Saigon, a notorious theatre of war where it suffered heavy casualties.
Similarly, during the Iraq invasion 2003-5, the frustration and demoralisation were so much on the armed forces who were losing the battle due to the complexity of asymmetric warfare system which they had no concrete idea of how to manage, that some countries like Italy withdrew their armed forces.
Not until armaments like drones to counter the insurgents who were very mobile were developed and deployed to rein in the new terrorists groups like Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, ISIS, the allied forces were on the losing side as is currently the case with the Nigerian military which seem to be flat footed against the agile and technology savvy insurgents.
Today, Al Qaeda, ISIS and other strains of terrorist groups have been highly degraded in the Middle East simply because the correct strategy and tools with the ability and capacity to literally zap the terrorist leaders with drones etc were deployed in prosecuting the war.
Unfortunately, such cherry news of victory is not yet the narrative in Nigeria. And that’s simply because, Boko Haram or its new variant, Islamic State West Africa, ISWA (which has claimed allegiance to Abubakar Al Bagdadi the ISIS leader) has gone high-tech, while it is still being engaged by Nigerian military in the same conventional warfare strategy which the forces that invaded Iraq applied and failed in the Middle East until they adopted the right strategy.
I have just read a comment in the media attributed to the chief of army staff, Gen. Tukur Buratai, who reportedly stated that no military in the world ever has the complete equipment to fight with. That may be true, but are we talking about complete, obsolete or the appropriate equipment?
It boggles the mind that our military still parades archaic warfare armaments like T-72 ancient relics tanks despite the recent appropriation by the current Nigerian parliament of a princely sum of one billion dollars less than six months ago for the prosecution of the war on terrorism and which the executive arm of government has utilised.
The current probe instituted by members of the lower chambers( green chambers) of the National Assembly, NASS, on the wanton killing of soldiers must have been motivated by their dissatisfaction with the mismatch between the huge sums invested and obsolete equipment exposed in the video of the unfortunate incident in Metele which the military has declared as fake.
Onyibe, a development Strategist, alumnus of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts university, Massachusetts, USA and a former Commissioner in Delta State government, wrote in from Abuja.
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