by Ranti Joseph

Experts warned against any premature declaration of victory, with Boko Haram still proving capable of carrying out deadly hit-and-run strikes and indications of coalition lapses.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan on Friday said the military hopes to recapture towns seized by Boko Haram within a month, in what would be a swift victory after six years of bloody conflict.

Jonathan, who is seeking re-election on March 28, said Boko Haram was getting weaker and weaker every day. “I’m very hopeful that it will not take us more than a month to recover old territories that hitherto have been in their hands,” he told the BBC.

Nigeria has claimed major gains against the Islamists with the help of coalition partners Cameroon, Chad and Niger, achieving in just over one month what for years it had failed to on its own.

Two out of three of the worst hit northeast states Yobe and Adamawa have been declared cleared while the third, Borno, is expected to be liberated soon, the military said this week.

Major towns such as Bama and Dikwa are among some 36 localities recaptured, with just three said to be still in rebel hands.

National security advisor Mike Omeri said on Wednesday that the final onslaught was under way.

More than 13,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict and the main opposition candidate, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, has campaigned hard on the government’s security record.

Mark Schroeder, vice-president for Africa analysis at security risk consultants Stratfor, said announcing victory before March 28 made political sense for Jonathan as part of the election campaign.

“The risk he runs, however, is that the insurgency is not really defeated, only disrupted temporarily and for political posturing. It would be akin to the Mission Accomplished declaration by US President George W. Bush in 2003 that was a premature symbol of victory in Iraq. Clearly, Iraq is still today struggling with an Islamist insurgency,” he told AFP.

Until this year, Nigerian troops had appeared unable even unwilling to tackle the better-armed militants, who have allied themselves with the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria researcher at the International Crisis Group, attributed the sense of urgency to the prospect of defeat by Buhari.

“That urgency facilitated the delivery and deployment of new military hardware, including assets more relevant to counter-insurgency operations,” he said.

Improvement had been seen in command and deployment structures, including the use of senior officers to lead combat operations, Special Forces and co-operation with local vigilantes.

He also said that the involvement of foreign military contractors, many of them South Africans, to provide technical expertise might also have made a difference. “Offensives by the military forces of neighboring countries have helped to overstretch the insurgents and thus undermine their ability to withstand Nigerian military offensives,” he added.