Those awaiting the conclusion of the war against Boko Haram insurgency by the end of this year, have cause to be apprehensive of the reality of that deadline. Two events within the last one week have added up to dim the prospects of that date which President Buhari handed down to the military.
With barely two months to go and despite copious assurances by the military on their successful efforts to weaken the fighting capacity of the insurgents, there are emerging signals that Boko Haram is not about to peter out very shortly. Not with its coordinated and successful attack on a detention camp of the Directorate of Security Services DSS in Lokoja, Kogi State. In that surprising and largely successful attack, about 30 detainees were freed even as it left in its trail four people dead, one of them a policeman. The heavily armed insurgents who overpowered operatives of the DSS were only subdued after a combined team of soldiers and policemen were drafted to scene.
Within the same week also, the Nigerian Army seemed to have erased whatever remained of this optimism when it alerted that certain individuals were working to reverse the gains made and scuttle efforts at achieving the presidential directive to defeat Boko Haram terrorists within three months. Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman in a statement sent “a very strong and serious final warning to some prominent individuals and political groups who hail from Borno State in particular and north-east generally, that there is information of plans by some highly placed individuals and political groups to undermine and scuttle the fight against terrorism and insurgency in this country”.
A common string holds the two incidents together. Both are united in casting a slur on the prospects of a quick conclusion of the war on terrorism. Before now, we have been fed with sundry accounts of the escapades of the military in freeing people kidnapped by the sect, the capturing of arms and ammunitions; general disenchantment within the rank and file of the insurgents resulting in low morale and cases of surrender. All these had raised hopes that the insurgents are living on borrowed time as the presidential deadline approached. But this optimism pales into insignificance in the face of the successful attack on the DSS detention facility in Kogi State and the shocking alarm from the army. There are now genuine fears that if the insurgents could still muster such a sophistication that saw to the assault on the DSS facility, then much has not really changed.
Especially at a time the current regime has indicated interest to negotiate with the sect. If the insurgents are interested in such negotiations or those being talked to are their real leaders, they would not have been in a hurry to launch attacks to free their detained members. The fact of this goes to reinforce the reservations of those opposed to negotiations with the group. It also raises questions on the propriety of the high number of terrorists that have been released from custody in the last two or three months.
This reservation is further reinforced by revelation from the presidency that one of the conditions given by the terrorists for the release of the Chibok girls was the freeing of one of their detained members who specialized in making improvised explosives. They could not have been demanding for his release if they had no immediate need for his services. Of course, that demand was rebuffed.
The planning, execution and eventual success of the attack have also brought to the public domain the vulnerability of detaining terrorism suspects in facilities that are not well fortified. If they could overpower a DSS facility located in a state capital, it remains to be imagined what could have been the situation if the suspects were held in prisons located in the hinterlands. That was the point that was stridently canvassed when Boko Haram suspects were brought to a rural prison in Ekwulobia, Aguata local government area of Anambra State.
But by far of greater consequence to the conclusion of the war was the alarm by the army of plans by some prominent politicians and groups in Borno State and the north-east to sabotage the efforts of the military. This matter is as instructive as it is serious and weighty. And in it we may locate factors that have been responsible for the festering insurgency.
Before now, the sponsorship of the Boko Haram insurgency has been a subject of serious debate, buck-passing and acrimony. In the build up to the last elections, key political parties made strident efforts to accuse opponents of culpability in giving behind-the-scene support to the festering malaise. Attempts were made to establish a linkage between the unfolding political competition and the rising tempo of the insurgency onslaught. Boko Haram was seen in some circles as bottled up political anger seeking expression through a religious garb.
It cannot be forgotten in a hurry the acerbic and outlandish allegations by then governor of Adamawa State, Muritala Nyako. He had in a letter to the northern governors at the heat of the ravaging insurgency titled “on-going full scale genocide in northern Nigeria,” accused the federal government of killing the citizens and attributing the killings to “the so-called Boko Haram”. The thematic essence of his allegation was that Boko Haram was a contrivance of the Jonathan regime to depopulate the north.
He was not alone in this line of thought. Before his letter, the Northern Elders Forum had in a statement alleged that most of the “conflicts in the north are being engineered to weaken the north both economically and politically by interests who are intent to exploit such weaknesses for political advantage”. These two instances are instructive given the alarm by the army that key politicians and influential groups in Borno State and the northeast are sabotaging the efforts to end the war on insurgency. What is evident from this is that northerners may after all, be the greatest enemies to themselves in the matter of Boko Haram insurgency.
There is no reason to disbelieve the army. If they have no idea of who the culprits are, they would not have confined their identified sponsors within the north-east zone and Borno State in particular. By that, they have narrowed the confines of those who aid and abet the Boko Haram insurgency. We cannot afford to gloss over the wider dimensions of this.
More fundamentally, the revelation has put to task the claims of the likes of Nyako and the Northern Elders Forum. They should now begin to reconcile their earlier allegations with the alarm by the army. They should be made to tell the nation the sponsors of the continuing “genocide” aimed at depopulating the north.
This point has to be made given that such sweeping allegations did incurable damage to the morale of the fighting soldiers and may have been largely responsible for the indiscipline that was then rampant.
At that time, it was convenient to sell such a damaging dummy because there was “a common enemy”. Now that enemy is no longer in sight, the game is up. There is no further deceit or primordial sentiment to play up. We should place the blame squarely at the door steps of those who by acts of omission or commission have encouraged this war.
The army should therefore, deploy the facts at their disposal to apprehend all sponsors and collaborators of the insurgency sect who hide under the cover of the nation’s fault lines to levy war on us all.
NATION
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