Since 2009, Nigeria has been waging a war against the Boko Haram Islamist sect predominantly in the North-East and in other parts of the country.
The war which has been quite asymmetrical as the terrorist group keeps employing unconventional tactics has caused thousands of troops deployed to the war front and the formation of a new army division based in Maiduguri.
While the estimate for the total number of casualties from the insurgency is quite well-known at about 13,000 persons, little is known about how many officers and men in the military have died while defending their country against these terrorists.
There has been a recent controversy surrounding 105 soldiers who allegedly went missing and what happened to them, if at all they did go missing.
To date, the Nigerian army has denied and contradicted itself over the true version of events and has left Nigerians wondering what indeed happened. It worsens with the report on 24th November in the print version of THISDAY Newspapers that 34 soldiers killed by Boko Haram had been quietly buried in Maiduguri.
This recent controversy is not out of tune with the culture of secrecy that pervades the Nigerian military – one in which they are coy on details of their operations and deny their officers and men when stories of their abductions or killings break.
For example, when Wing Commander Chimda Hedima was captured by Boko Haram last year October and beheaded, the Nigerian Airforce denied that it happening, only for it to turn around and contradict itself by promising to avenge the killing of the brave pilot.
Till date, Nigerians do not have a specific number for how many of their countrymen died in peacekeeping missions to Liberia, Sierra Leone or Darfur in Sudan.
It is because of this culture of secrecy that the Nigerian Army has refused to have journalists embedded within it in order to bring independent news from the frontlines and has even gone further to try to censor news coming from the North-East by asking journalists to submit their stories for vetting before it is published.
This lack of openness from the military makes it hard for it to effectively lead the narrative in the war, as we have seen in recent past with victories by the Nigerian military ascribed to the Chadian army in the war against Boko Haram.
The military also misses out on great chances to build broad-based public support for it when it continues to operate in isolation from the general public.
It can be observed that whenever details of men and women who pay the supreme sacrifice for the defence and unity of this country breaks, there is an outpouring of grief and sympathy that cuts across the ethnic and religious schisms that are usually ever-present in Nigeria.
Humans connect to human stories, and the Nigerian military can build a genuine connection of the back of these stories.
But most of all, the Nigerian military is not accountable to itself or to just the government, but the people of Nigeria whom it defends and protects. As such, it is only expected that such details as to how the military is conducting its operation or how many members it has lost should not be shrouded in secrecy.
The recent controversy of 105 missing soldiers/34 dead soldiers presents the Nigerian military to make a clean break from the past and start a new culture of being open, honest and forthcoming with such details to the Nigerian people.
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