‘Their parents and their kids’ | From a terrorists’ attack to a NAF airstrike

How do you think personally think the war against terrorism is going? You must have an opinion, and it must be that the armed forces are fighting a lost war, especially because of the lack of political will, or that monies spent to end the war are going into private treasure chests.

No one should invalidate your opinion knowing that terrorism has hit home – every corner of the country – and it seems insecurity has overwhelmed the current government, just as former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, says.

The numbers, people killed because of insecurity, cannot be determined, and only numbers that get to the media are known. Some would report hundreds in 2022 alone, others already report thousands.

If you think there are words to describe it, you may want to determine if you are trivialising ‘insecurity in Nigeria’ or not.

What is today’s story?

The parents of two of the six children that were killed in an airstrike by a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) jet strike on Wednesday were killed by bandits two years ago, Premium Times reports.

According to the report, residents said the six children were killed when a NAF jet bombed their residence in Kurebe, Shiroro Local Government.

Salis Sabo, the spokesperson of the Coalition of Shiroro Association (COSA), said the incident happened Wednesday morning, April 13, as the children were returning from a motorised borehole in the community where they had gone to fetch water.

“The two other children who lost their lives in the incidents have for long lost their parents. One of them is a daughter of late Malam Isah Kurebe and the other is a daughter of late Malam Adamu Kurebe, who were killed by the terrorists two years ago.

“The innocent child he left over, has now been taken away by a similar fate. This is the second time this type of incident is happening,” Sabo said in a statement.

He said a man who lost two of his daughters and two granddaughters in the incident said there were no bandits in the village at the time the aircraft bombed the community.

He added that the camps of the insurgents are well known and wondered why they were not targeted by the air force.

“The insurgents around the community are of two groups, with two different camps. One links up with the community through Unguwan Zomo, the other through Kwantan Yashi area. We don’t know why the why fighter jet would be targeting the community where civilians live,” Sabo said.

Similar events

In 2017, a NAF fighter jet on a mission against Boko Haram extremists, mistakenly bombed an internally displaced persons camp in Rann, Borno.

More than 100 refugees and aid workers are killed. Soldiers were part of the casualties.

In September 2021, NAF confirmed that there was an airstrike targeting a branch of the Islamist group Boko Haram in the northeast part of the country where civilians were reported to have been killed, a spokesman said.

Edward Gabkwet, the air force spokesman, said he had received many reports that civilians were killed but could not say definitively.

Earlier in September 2021, AFP reported that a Nigerian military aircraft targeting terrorist camps in Kwatar Daban Masara in the Lake Chad area, killed at least 20 fishermen.

There are other cases.

In the spirit of progress against insurgency, we can celebrate when terrorists camps are decimated and their commanders arrested or killed, but we cannot celebrate the killing of innocent Nigerians.

If this continues, who then is the fight against insurgency for?

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