Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, takes a look at the Boko Haram resurgence and the journey so far.
Again, members of the deadly Boko Haram sect have stepped up their ferocious attacks against Nigerians. This time, they are even going beyond their traditional stronghold, the North East.
When Nigerians were enthusing that the sect’s strength had been weakened and that it would soon be overrun by security operatives, new occurrences seem to prove otherwise.
Latest sad stories of renewed attacks by the group have become a pointer that the insurgency is far from over, but getting rather more sophisticated.
From Maiduguri to Kaduna, Kano and Jos, it has been tale of horror as the lethal group continues to strike with deadly efficiency, maiming and taking innocent lives.
Contrary to the assurances of government that its agencies are on top on the challenge, the consistency of the bombings has again brought home, grimly, the reality that the battle against the terrorists is not about to be won yet.
Unlike in its former strategies of confronting the military head-on, the sect has changed tactics, resorting fully to using the suicide bombing and other guerilla techniques.
Placing Jonathan’s last effort
In going against the insurgents, former President Goodluck Jonathan did not leave the scene without making resolute efforts through the nation’s security operatives and the task forces that were set up. But not much was achieved, as the Boko Haram challenge was politicised. Even the Army became a victim of the conspiracy. The situation was so bad that at a time Jonathan had to cry out that even some members of his cabinet were involved in the Boko Haram intrigue.
Over time, the sect’s target shifted from attack on worship places like churches and mosques.
At a time, a United Nations building in Abuja was razed, followed by bombings on motor parks, institutions and personalities.
Villages were equally torched, while women, the young and married, were taken into hostage culminating in the over 200 girls of a secondary school in Chibok being hauled into captivity in April last year. The girls are yet to be located and released.
At a time, Jonathan was virulently criticised by the North as having agenda to decimate the region.
The audacity of the Boko Haram was the excuse for the postponement of the 2015 elections for six weeks by the last administration.
The former president had then pledged that he would do all within his powers to ensure that all Nigerian territories still held by insurgents were totally liberated before the May 29, 2015, hand-over date.
He said he was determined to hand over a country completely free of terrorist strongholds to Buhari.
It was obvious that during the six-week postponement, military operations in the North East recorded huge successes, with two states completely free from the terrorists, while operations in the third state reached a concluding stage.
According to Jonathan, “We can now say two states are completely free from terrorist control, while in the third state, it is only in one local government area that they are still present. That is in the Sambisa Forest.
“We never expected that Boko Haram will build up that kind of capacity. We under-rated their external influence. Since after the civil war, we’ve not fought any war, we don’t manufacture weapons, so we had to look for help to re-equip our army and the air force.”
It was believed then that it was on the strength of the progress made that inspired Jonathan to express the optimism that Boko Haram was getting weaker and would be subdued in a matter of months.
“I’m very hopeful that it will not take us more than a month to recover the old territories that hitherto had been in Boko Haram’s hands,” he had noted in an interview with the BBC.
Experts say with the dismantling of Boko Haram insurgents from their Sambisa base and the surveillance mounted by multi-national taskforce, the group’s capacity to take territories was limited and the only option left for them was to indulge more on suicide bombing. It is a situation where they strike at different targets, sometime within a space of minutes or hours or days so as to continue to create and sustain the fear that they cannot be subdued.
The Buhari resolve
President Muhammadu Buhari, in his first address, shortly after his election, vowed to deal with the Boko Haram madness, stressing that the group would soon know the strength of Nigerians’ collective will.
Buhari said his government would spare no effort to defeat the group.
“Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will and commitment to rid this nation of terror and bring back peace. We should spare no effort. In tackling the insurgency, we have a tough and urgent job to do,” Buhari said in his first formal speech after winning the election.
Again in his inaugural speech, the president acknowledged and reaffirmed that one of his most immediate challenges was to tackle the murderous insurgency.
The president, many believed, struck the right chord in the hearts of many Nigerians with his decision to relocate the Military Command Centre of the fight against Boko Haram to the epicentre of the insurgency in Maiduguri, Borno State.
His announcement of this decision was clearly one of the highlights of his inaugural address to the nation on May 29.
The applause that greeted the presidential directive was massive, but critics were still doubtful and upheld that relocation alone was not the magic wand.
Expectedly, Buhari followed up the directive with several meetings with the Military High Command, and visits to Niger and Chad which are collaborating with Nigeria on the war against insurgency.
Taming the monster
The Nigerian Army, in compliance with the presidential directive, announced the establishment of the Military Command and Control Centre (MCCC) in Maiduguri for the war against the insurgents.
A conference of Chiefs of Defence Staff of member-countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) was also hosted by Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, in Abuja, to fashion out the modalities for the take-off of the Multi-National Joint Task Force for the campaign against terror in the region.
The re-organisation of the Multi-National Joint Task Force under the LCBC and the appointment of Nigeria’s Major-General Tukur Buratai as Force Commander, with office in N’djamena, capital of Republic of Chad, were also part of the efforts on the ground to contain the sect’s activities.
Nigerians welcomed the apparent fresh resolve of Buhari to tackle the insurgency both within the country and the sub-region, but the present ugly developments of brazen attacks seem to be putting a question mark on the capacity that the government claims to have in caging the Boko Haram effrontery.
Altering the strategies
A lot of reasons have been adduced as to why the deadly sect continues to bounce back, even when it appears it had been overrun.
The outgoing British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Andrew Pocock, gave an insight recently when he had interactive session with journalists in Kaduna.
He said the problem of Boko Haram insurgency in the North East was not something that could be resolved with the use of the army, the police or the security agencies only.
According to him, “We don’t look at the problem in the North East as purely a security problem. It is not something that can be resolved with the use of the army or the police or the security agencies only. It is not going to be solvable.
“There have to be three different things: the first is a properly articulated security efforts; the second is that, there has to be a different kind of politics in the North East, where the state and federal government work together instead of against each other and where there is a much more common and agreed agenda about what needs to be done to correct many years of mis-governance and of poor policy in the North East.
“The third dimension has to be a developmental and economic uplift agenda. Too many, particularly, young people are not only without employment in the North East but because of the insurgency, they are without any economic prospect whatsoever. No one can live without hope, and indeed if the economic and the developmental aspect of these are not addressed, the opportunities for radicalisation are much greater. So, those three things have to work in tandem, the security instrument, politics and development/economic approach.”
He, however, stated that with the new government of Buhari, people are looking to a chance to get out of the security situation in the North East, adding that, in the overall, there is greater possibility of stability and economic success, perhaps than they might have been before the election.
The High Commissioner said although the army had some successes in 2013, those efforts were not followed up and Boko Haram came surging back in 2014 and effectively controlled most of the North-eastern country in Borno State as well as Adamawa and Yobe.
Ezekiel Odunkala, legal expert, said Boko Haram has international links with other terror organisations and receives funding, training and other logistic support from them and as such may not be easy to subdue.
But he is optimistic that with adequate intelligence gathering, proactive response by security operatives and coalition with neighbouring countries, the sect can be brought to its knees.
Last line
The increased rate of bombings and other violent attacks that have continued to occur since after the inauguration of the Buhari government, experts say, are signs that Nigeria and her coalition partners must increase their efforts to rout the sect.
Commentators contend that the situation on the ground ought to elicit clearly, a clarion call that the nation’s military must be prepared for the long haul.
Though the military personnel deployed to Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states, three strongholds of the terrorists, going by reports, have been giving the insurgents a good fight, there seems to be more to be done to win the war.
For instance, the people in the North East region, according to observers, should provide more useful information on the hide-outs of the insurgents to the military personnel.
The reason being that gathering intelligence on the movement of the insurgents, their hide-outs and when they plan to strike will go a long way in nipping their deadly attacks in the bud.
Nigerians have lost over 4,000 loved ones to the terrorists in the last few years. Thus, political watchers insist that the earlier the war on terror is won, the better for all the citizens and the economy of the states that have been ravaged by their murderous activities.
