Ife Adebayo: Why the military are now taking the fight to Boko Haram (Rejoinder)

by Ife Adebayo

JTF

I am compelled to write this article in response to Nnamdi Anekwe-Chive’s article on YNaija which seeks to find excuses for the Federal Government and absolve them of the obvious gross negligence, lack of interest and absolute disregard for lives lost in the fight against Boko Haram.

[READ: Nnamdi Anekwe-Chive: Why the military are now taking the fight to Boko Haram (Part 2)]

It is not news that the Nigerian president on March 20th, 2014, speaking in Namibia said “initially, we handled it (terrorism) with kid’s gloves, but now we have decided to be a little more forceful because we must thrash out these terror groups. We must not allow it to continue to slow down economic growth in that part of the country” This was widely reported in the media, one publication by Punch Newspapers can be seen HERE.

It is also on record that as far back as 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan said “they (boko haram) are our siblings and you cannot send the army to wipe out your family”. Just 2 weeks ago in an interview with This Day Newspapers the president again said “Probably at the beginning, we, and I mean myself and the team, we underrated the capacity of Boko Haram”. It is therefore surprising that anyone will seek to  absolve the President and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed forces of any fault, especially seeing he has himself said over the years that he hasn’t been a good judge of the problems faced by the Boko Haram insurgency, this is in spite of the fact that at a time Boko Haram was in control of parts of Nigeria larger than the whole of Belgium, they had killed more than 15,000 and displaced more than 1million Nigerians, they had committed serious atrocities and had even beheaded a Nigerian pilot, a Wing Commander and uploaded the video on YouTube, they had attacked a school in Buni Yadi and killed 59 boys in cold blood, attacked a girl’s school in Chibok and kidnapped almost 300 girls. And the president said “we underrated them”. This in itself is enough indictment of the role of the government in the advancement of Boko Haram. However, I will seek to address the issues in Nnamdi’s article as briefly as I can.

Nnamdi correctly states that boko haram started with suicide bombings, and the government’s efforts to contain them were not exactly fruitful as we had more bombs going off in various locations. He however seeks to shift the blame from the President and Commander in Chief, to the Military heads and Defense Chiefs, he suggests President Jonathan’s recent admission that he underrated the sect was because he didn’t get the right advice, here is what he has to say: “what kind of advice and briefings were they (defense chiefs) offering the political leadership headed by the President and the National assembly? And were they providing futuristic credible threat analysis to correspond with defence/security procurement request to enable the military/security, plan/fight the future wars

I think this is a further indictment of the leadership of the country, as Head of State, if you are given security briefings and you do not ask the right questions, you do not visit the affected areas and talk to the people involved, you do not read the papers, how will you be able to get a proper independent assessment of the situation? An example is that of the Chibok girls kidnap, it took the visit of Malala, a young Pakistani Human Rights Advocate for the President to actually meet the parents of the kidnapped girls, till date the President has not visited Chibok and I am sure he does not have a proper idea of how and when they were kidnapped. This is nothing but a total and complete failure of leadership.

Nnamdi tries to make us believe that the armed forces were not adequately trained to take on the insurgents, for those of us who have friends in the armed forces, some of who have died fighting this war, we have always known the problem was never the training of our men, the problem was always one of corruption, lack of direction and lack of competent leadership. The only reason the Armed Forces are now being successful in this fight is because the government now sees it as a priority. The insurgency in the North East was simply not a priority for this government, this is why it took 18 days for the President and Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces to make any comments when almost 300 girls were kidnapped in Chibok, this is why a day after the suicide bombing in Nyanya the president was at a rally in Kano dancing and having fun. This was a bomb attack that killed more than 70 people, and also till today the president has made no mention of the 59 boys slaughtered in their school in Buni Yadi. The situation in the North East was just never a priority until now that it affects the President’s re-election bid.

I have talked to many friends who have fought boko haram and who are still fighting Boko Haram, in one army officer’s words “10 days is too much for us to finish these guys (Boko Haram)”. The situation was that soldiers were being sent to war with only 20 bullets each, the night the Chibok girls were kidnapped, about 200 Boko Haram fighters attacked the town, the town was being protected by only 12 soldiers. The soldiers had to withdraw as doing anything will be suicidal. All our soldiers needed were adequate deployment of men and resources, these resources were already available. In Osun State the government deployed thousands of troops for the elections, while we had soldiers being out-numbered in battles in the northeast. Like I said before – priorities, the government’s priorities were simply different. All our officers and men needed was adequate troops’ deployment, sufficient weapons, nothing serious, just enough bullets, enough tanks, Armored Personnel Carriers etc. These things were already procured. Last year alone the military budget was over 1 trillion naira.

In part 2 of Nnamdi’s article, he states the military needed different types of equipment from what they already had, I make bold to say that this statement is not true, I bet Nnmadi has not been talking to soldiers in the battle field. I will give two examples, a soldier called me and told me that four Armored Personnel Carriers for a unit in Yola had been delivered to his military base in Jaji and two months after it had not been deployed, another soldier told me of how soldiers had to transport military equipment with malfunctioning civilian low-bed vehicles while brand new military low-bed vehicles lay in waste in the military yards, this was in early 2014.. The problem therefore was never equipment but leadership and direction.

Nnamdi tries to convince his readers that the Nigerian government has just recently been able to get the required equipment to procure this war and this is why we are now recording successes, I have it on good authority from soldiers in the front that there are only a few additional tanks to what they had before, the only thing that has changed in this battle is that the government is now serious and has ensured that we have enough soldiers in the battle front, there is a proper direction of which way the battle should go, and soldiers are given enough bullets, it is as simple as this. There has been no major additional weapons that we could not buy before or that only America could provide, the military has been deceiving Nigerians about new weapons, the twitter handle of General Olukolade, the Nigerian Defense spokesperson yesterday tweeted pictures, from a military website, and claimed these were new weapons and aircraft obtained by the Nigerian Armed Forces, I called him out and pointed out the website he lifted the pictures from, he replied that the website was the “original base of the equipment from where we got them. Mostly Russian”. This is not true as the website is a non-profit website that just gives information on military weapons; they do not sell weapons and cannot be the “original base where we got them from”.

Some friends in the military have confirmed we do not have any of the weapons or air craft pictures tweeted by the General. In fact, a friend in the Air Force laughed when he saw the pictures, he said the bombers in the picture are only available in the US Air Force. One Farouk Fakunle on Facebook also said “the picture to the bottom right is a Russian Tor-M SA-18 missile battery, meant specifically for air defense against advanced fighter planes. So unless boko haram has an Air Force, that is a total useless piece of military hardware”. He went further to say “I can identify every single piece of machinery on that picture. Nigeria does not have the capability to operate even one of them, in fact only a handful of countries do”. It therefore surprises me that the Nigerian Defense spokesperson will be lying to Nigerians about military hardware purchased. I understand the need to show something for the trillions voted for defense, but we are happy enough that we are making some progress now; they do not have to lie to us.

I am very confident that our military have been adequately equipped to combat Boko Haram from day one, a military friend told me last year “I have fought in the Niger Delta, I have fought in Sudan, I have fought in Borno, walahi Boko Haram are not a formidable enemy, the Niger Delta militants are a much more difficult force to fight, and Borno has the easiest of terrains to battle these guys, if only the government will let us do it”. I have always maintained that the problem of Boko Haram has never been a problem of the bravery or efficiency of our armed forces, but a failure of leadership.

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Ife Adebayo is an IT Consultant with work experience in Germany, United Kingdom and Nigeria. He currently runs his own IT firm in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an ardent believer in the Nigerian project and encourages all Nigerians to become actively involved in making Nigeria a better place.

Ife is a registered member of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Epe Local Government, Lagos State. He was an active member of the UK branch of the party, holding the post of Youth Leader for the year 2010/2011.

 

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

One comment

  1. well said Ife, well said

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