January 25, 2015, and The Telegraph of UK’s report on Boko Haram: “Militants from Nigeria’s Boko Haram have attacked Maiduguri, the biggest city in the country’s Northeast, with residents reporting heavy gunfire and shelling from early on Sunday morning and dozens of combatants are said to have been killed.
“… Maiduguri is the capital of Borno State and would be a major prize for the insurgents, who already control large areas of the state and key border crossings into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad…”
Chilling excerpts that gave the not incredulous impression that Boko Haram, the murderous, bloodthirsty and deranged Islamist group, was here to stay and do as it wished!
January 25, 2016, and a report from Nigeria’s Daily Sun: “Suspected Boko Haram insurgents have launched a deadly attack in Adamawa State, raiding six villages in Girei Local Government of Adamawa State and leaving at least 15 people dead. The attack came in the wake of President Muhammadu Buhari’s assertion that the war on Boko Haram has been significantly won and gave assurances that everything possible would be done to keep the terrorists away from reclaimed villages.
Media reports “… said that there was an exchange of gunfire between the Nigerian military and the attackers who were forced to retreat into the bushes.”
Exactly one year later. So, is Boko Haram alive and well? Not quite.
For one, the frontal attacks on big towns and cities, with the anarchists thumping their noses against Nigeria’s much-vaunted federal might has fizzled out. So has the lunatic boasts of Abubakar Shekau or his corresponding ghosts, as he bobbed up from yes-he’s-dead-no-he’s-not-dead sickening tales from the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, and its army high command.
But the threat seems to have retreated to the pristine hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, of Boko Haram’s battle-entry strategy, before it was allowed to festered by an apologetic and hesitating presidency. That a DPO reportedly lost his life in the Adawama attack echos those dire beginnings, when Boko Haram on Okada would attack police posts, kill luckless policemen in there and set free detainees in the facilities’ cells.
Yet, between January 2015 and January 2016, Boko Haram has been so heavily degraded that talks about mass resettlement of the thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) don’t sound so fantastic and far-fetched again.
If Hardball were even to be more date-dramatic, he would insist that in seven months, a sure-footed and determined government has all but checkmated a seven-year insurgency, that looked like raging undeterred for no less than another seven years, at the very least!
But if the media remains sceptical at President Buhari’s claim that the war against Boko Haram had been substantially won, it is because humans are basically pain-avoiding; a traumatised people, even more so. That would explain the seeming waywardness and obduracy of the Biblical Israelites who, after being saved from Egyptian tyranny, en route to the promised land, would forget the last celestial munificence, no matter how grand, and scream at Jehovah to return them to Egypt, rather kill them all in the desert between Egypt and Canaan.
Of course, the 15 killed in the latest Adamawa attack are humans with flesh and blood, families and loved ones. They are not just mere stats to be compared and discounted. That means the war won’t be fully won, until every inch of Nigerian territory is safe from Boko Haram’s plague.
Still, Nigerians cannot afford to be as obdurate and stiff-necked as the Israelites of old. We should applaud the government to more success, when it is doing well, just as we reserve the right to excoriate it, when it falters.
On Boko Haram, the Buhari Presidency has done well. But it should not rest until those blood-sucking criminals are totally sacked from our land.
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