advertisement

Continued from Part 5

It is important that we remember all the precious souls that have been lost in the unprecedented war of terror unleashed on some parts of our country by these individuals who want to compel us to live our lives their way. They will not succeed! In their mission, they have maimed and raped. They have killed men, women and children, rendering many children orphans and several women widows. They have made violence their ideology and are bent on destroying our country. Dear countrymen and women, we will not allow them (President Goodluck Jonathan)

nce again, it�s the same, �we killed you�, �you didnt kill me, I am alive�, and �Nope we killed you�. Few days ago, The Nigerian military released photos to prove that it had indeed killed Shekau in Konduga, Borno State, during a battle. Immediately after the military claimed it killed the Boko Haram leader on September 17, a Borno-born journalist said to be a close ally of Boko Haram, Ahmad Salkida, dismissed the reported killing. We read then that Salkida, who is on self-exile in the United Arab Emirates over alleged threats to his life, said he has it on �authority� that Abubakar Shekau was hale and hearty. In his words: �Mark my words: I have it on authority that Shekau is well and alive. The picture going round is not the person who torments us with his group�. Also, a northern-based human rights activist, Shehu Sani, said he was shocked to see the news of the killing of Shekau make headlines, again. The rights campaigner, who also doubles as the President of the Civil Rights Congress, said that the development was worrisome as it was the �third time he (Shekau) was killed�. He stated that he was expecting the insurgent group to release a statement denouncing or confirming the reported killing of its leader. Hear him: �The news of the killing of the Boko Haram leader is in the headlines again. This is the third time he was killed. It gives the nation a lot of relief but only if it�s true. In a war situation, it�s difficult to extract the truth from a misleading morale, boosting statements. However, if the report is true, the group will certainly make a statement and announce a new head and if it�s not true, they will also respond. This is what they did when their founder was exterminated in 2009�.

Then, according to the AFP, Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, has dismissed Nigerian military claims of his death in a new video on Thursday, October 2. The new 36-minutes video, according to the news agency, showed Shekau saying: �Here I am, alive. I will only die the day Allah takes my breath� Nothing will kill me until my days are over�I�m still alive. Some people asked you if Shekau has two souls. No, I have one soul, by Allah. It is propaganda that is prevalent. I have one soul. I�m an Islamic student. I�m the Islamic student whose seminary you burnt� I�m not dead�. The Nigerian Military authority thereafter released a press statement that �It should not surprise anybody if the terrorists decide to manipulate pictures, clone another Shekau or upload a pre-recorded video all in a bid to prove his invincible. As far as we are concerned, the individual who was appearing in video and claiming to be the leader of the terrorist group was killed in the Konduga battle in September. The resemblance of the corpse and that of the eccentric character was incontrovertible. His identity was equally corroborated by people who knew him before we announced his death�.

Who is telling the truth? One thing is for sure: The terrorists do follow the same pattern everytime. When the real Shekau was killed in 2013, his followers did the same by claiming that he was alive and they used manipulated video to hoodwink the gullible. Now we know that Shekau was really killed then. What Boko Haram is doing now may be a propaganda stunt. This writer wonders why people still dwell on the issue concerning that blood sucker called Boko Haram leader, who has exited humanity for long. That beast lost all forms of human characteristics or any trait of human consciousness long ago and is as good as dead, even if he was not killed on September 17, 2014, as the Nigerian military claims. Living or dead changes nothing for that vampire, because, sooner his sins would finally catch up with him. Let him ask those who shed innocent blood how they fared thereafter. The Australian negotiator, Stephen Davis, has revealed that the real Abubakar Shekau was killed around June 19, 2013. His words: �I continue to hold to the position that Shekau was killed on or about June 19, 2013 when we were close to concluding a peace deal. Videos immediately prior to that time were produced using a �fake� Shekau. The fake Shekau is Isa Damsaka. Boko Haram leaders have been using him for quite some time to make their propaganda videos. The script is written for him by another commander which he then reads as he delivers his message on-camera. It was confirmed to me by Boko Haram that he was killed in the recent military engagement at Konduga. Most members of Boko Haram have never seen Shekau. They believe what they have been told that Shekau is their leader. The real Shekau is dead. The Shekau the world has been seeing in videos is a �fake� and Boko Haram fighters have been fooled. They have followed blindly. The message of Boko Haram purifying Islam is also fake. When the Boko Haram leaders broke the news of Shekau�s death in June last year, they said he had diverted from the Holy Qu�ran through the kidnappings, rapes and beheadings. The fake Shekau continued these atrocities under the patronage of the sponsors and escalated their terrorist activities. Shekau is dead but they will try to find another to perpetuate the lie. This is the time for Boko Haram commanders to come forward and release the captive girls. There are Chibok girls and many other girls who have been kidnapped. Let commanders come forward and release a large number of girls as a first step towards a peace dialogue. I have no doubt the sponsors will try to prevent any commander releasing the girls as part of a peace deal. The pressure must therefore be put on the sponsors so the commanders can come forward�.

As written in the preceding part of this article, this writer still maintains that what�s important is not killing of the leader of Boko Haram but the putting of the complete sect to rout. Just as the federal government said: �it is immaterial if the leader of the terrorist group is killed or not. We want them to drop their weapons and embrace peace. We want them to drop their weapons, stop killing their parents and innocent people and accept peace.� This writer concurs with Ubale Musa: �Whether Shekau is alive or dead has been a subject of debate for more than a year. Security officials say there is more than one Shekau. The army has announced the death of the original one at least three times since 2009. It is hard to say how significant the death of this �lookalike� really is. Senior Fellow at Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja, Jibrin Ibrahim, says �it is not what matters. What matters is the surge we are seeing from the Nigerian military. That is what is important, that finally the army has picked up the capacity and the motivation to fight. The fact that many of the Boko Haram fighters are now being killed means they will start losing the confidence that every time they fight, victory would be theirs � Now the army is fighting them. It is a major and dramatic and positive change in the war.� But security analyst, Wase, says �the announcement Nigerians are waiting for, the one that will mark a turning point in this crisis, is that the Chibok schoolgirls, and other women since taken by militants, are free. If those girls and women are not released, there is no Nigerian that will ever be happy that there is progress in what is happening. Nearly 200 of the secondary schoolgirls taken from Chibok in April by Boko Haram are still missing�.

Now the chips are falling into place; now we know why the Nigeria military found Boko Haram a hard nut to crack before now. And now, we know why the Nigerian military has turned the table against the insurgents.

Why the military failed previously:

The Nigerian military had failed prior to this time, in its war against the insurgents, because, the military leaders ill-equipped their troops for the war. That has everything to do with sabotage. Those outside the military did not know the extent of this problem until now when some of the soldiers opened up. Our soldiers were made to operate with virtually nothing against well-equipped enemies. Also the policies the present military inherited, right from IBB and Abacha days, are still hurting the military till this day. Senator Saleh, a member of the Senate Joint National Assembly Committee on Defence, representing Kaduna Central, a retired army general, said, early September, that the situation was getting worse on daily basis. Hear him: �When the Chief of Defence Staff was appointed in January this year, the service chiefs made a categorical statement that within three months they will crush Boko Haram. But unfortunately, what we are seeing is a complete deterioration of the situation, so it is incumbent on us to find out why that deterioration. We have heard about our soldiers� mutiny, it is also our responsibility to find out why that is happening. For us to understand why that is happening, we need to go back to the Babangida (Gen. Ibrahim Babangida) era. After the 1990 Okar coup, the Federal Government of Nigeria systematically and comprehensively disarmed the military. All the tanks, all the artillery guns were disarmed and locked up. All the aircraft were parked in Ilorin and other places, flying stopped, training stopped to ensure regime security, not national security. All the good officers of the Nigerian Army were hounded out of the military.

There was over concentration of power at the centre which was the army headquarters. Prior to that, General Officers Commanding, GOCs, used to have training and manouvre grants.They had the power and responsibility to train their troops and battalions and to ensure an efficient logistics and service support system. All that stopped. Everything was from Army headquarters, everything was from Air Force headquarters, everything was from Naval headquarters.The attendant result was decay. Training was no longer going on at the battalion level, soldiers lost their skills and since then, no additional military equipment was purchased for the Nigerian Army. Even things as little as machine guns were in short supply, ammunition was in short supply. An individual soldier�s professional skill was to be a matchman, to shoot and hit his target but can he do that if he has no ammunition?

We have a duty to rebuild this army, to rebuild the armed forces, and unless we understand these basic facts, we are not going anywhere. Also, after some time the fighting doctrine of the Nigerian Army was changed. We were essentially brought up by the British. That means we knew how much materials we had, the tasks before us and so on. But along the line during the Obasanjo (Chief Olusegun Obasanjo) regime, General Obasanjo brought Americans here and our doctrine approach was changed to warfare. I make bold to tell you that up till today nobody understands that. I know it is a strategic concept of warfare but in Nigeria we are applying it to the operational and tactical level. It has created a lot of confusion within our army. Apart from that, our involvement in foreign operations and the kind of training we give to our soldiers for operations was a kind of defensive posture. You don�t kill until you are killed, you don�t attack until you are attacked. That also helped to change the orientation of some of our soldiers. Then again, I must mention here (alleged) fraud within the Ministry of Defence, fraud within the military service systems themselves has contributed a lot to diminishing our fighting capability.Further to that again, we have the issue of our combat service support. Because of (alleged) fraudulent activities, we monetized everything. Our supply services, our medical services are completely inefficient and are unable to support the fighting in the North East now. Right now, I stand to question how our soldiers are being fed.�

As if to support Senator Saleh, sources within the military blamed some of the difficulties being encountered in the fight against Boko Haram on what they termed indiscriminate retirement of experienced officers. The political and military leaders in Nigeria really failed Nigeria and Nigerians for quite sometime and one wonders how they were caught so unawares. While in their fake comfort zone, the political and military leaders of Nigeria forgot that Ted Nugent (1948) wrote: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." Huhuonline, in its editorial, once wrote, prior to the so called killing of Shekau: �As the London-based news magazine, The Economist noted: ��soldiers in the north-east are suffering from malfunctioning equipment, low morale, desertions and mutinies�despite a large increase in government spending on the army, little of this largesse has found its way to the front lines: many of the troops fighting against Boko Haram have been paid late, or sometimes not at all. What other names can these scenarios be called, except such unflattering descriptions as ignominious, opprobrious and devastating to the otherwise formidable psyche of the average Nigerian, known for resilience and aplomb?� Obviously, troops operating under such conditions are far from being motivated. And when morale is low, the operational performance of the troops must diminish. The wonder remains if it is the same breed of Nigerian soldiers, who, on foreign missions, triumphed over other insurgencies with remarkable success.

Aside low troop motivation, it is obvious there are other contributory factors for the brazenness of Boko Haram. First, there is a leadership problem not only within the military operation, but also nationally. When the President and Commander-In-Chief appears so absent in the face of excruciating security challenges, it will be hard, if not impossible, to expect total loyalty and commitment from the troops, who are being traumatized by the exploits of the insurgents. Moreover, the military itself appears to have failed to provide adequate leadership structure in its war against the insurgents. The leadership problem is not just about the appalling absence of a single, unified command structure to lead the operations, but also the lack of effective coordination, which manifests in the issuance of different, and at times contradictory reports on the military operation by various security agencies. Consequently, no one knows who is leading the war.This troubling development also reveal, in bold relief, that adequate infrastructural requirements for the successful prosecution of the war against Boko Haram were not put in place before the start of the war. It was just a matter of time before contradictions and setbacks begin to rear their ugly heads�.

To be continued!

TIT BITS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oCEvpMKGjE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J8eYR2oKdc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4PMSjUbg88&index=1&list=RDV4PMSjUbg88

THE THANX IS ALL YOURS!!!

Continued from Part 5