Nigerian Military and Security Sabotage

Samuel Enyi Otsapa
Samuelotsapa@gmail.com
08038127832
080547886

Under the leadership of Mohammed Yusuf, Boko Haram became violent in July 2009 after the sect members clashed with soldiers of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State. After this clash, Nigerian Army officers stormed the residence of the brother-inlaw of Mohammed Yusuf, arrested him and handed him over to the police. But under police custody, the man was killed, extrajudicially. His death sparked anger among members of the sect and it has since turned them into terrorists and insurgents, under the leadership of Abubakar Shekau; one of the two deputies of the late Mohammed Yusuf. As at today, it is estimated that the Boko Haram terrorism and insurgency has claimed more than 30,000 lives and displaced millions from their homes.

While Boko Haram’s terrorist activities have been on since 2009, the current administration through its Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Lai Mohammed, told Nigerians that the government he speaks for has succeeded in “technically defeating the Boko Haram sect.” Since Minister Mohammed made this statement four years ago, Nigerians have been asking him to explain, in a lay man’s language, what he meant. Nigerians are asking whether “technically defeating the Boko Haram sect” means the insurgents no longer occupy any territory in any part of Nigeria. Nigerians wants to know if “technically defeating the Boko Haram sect” means the terrorists no longer attack villages, farmlands and schools to kill people, destroy property and abduct/kidnap/rape women and children? Indeed, Nigerians want to be assured that “technically defeating the Boko Haram sect” means that the terrorists and insurgents are no longer able nor capable of attacking hard targets such as armed soldiers, battalions and military bases in the northeast, the epicenter of their activities.

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In this moment, asking these questions is pertinent, strategic and timely because some weeks ago, the convoy of Professor Babagana Umara Zulum, the governor of Borno State, was attacked for the second time since he became governor in May last year. The logical question that readily follows is: if the state governor, a man guarded by heavily armed security operatives, can be attacked, are the lives of the ordinary Borno citizens protected and safe? The obvious answer is no! Also, do we not know that since becoming governor of the state, Governor Zulum has not visited his own village for fear of Boko Haram? And like the state governor, Senators and lawmakers from the state cannot go to their constituencies/wards/villages out of fear. Therefore, if these elite men and women who are protected round the clock cannot visit their wards and villages, then ordinary citizens cannot live in those places – and this is the reason why thousands of Borno villagers are now residents of the many internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps within and outside the state.

After the recent attack on the Borno State governor’s convoy, which happened in the Baga area of Kukawa Local Government, the governor expressed regrets and questioned why the Nigerian Army, which has a base in the area, cannot go into Baga to overrun the terrorists, just as he accused Nigerian soldiers of been behind the attack on him. As monitored on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme, the governor was seen telling soldiers that: “you have been here for over one year now. There are 1,181 soldiers here, if you cannot take over Baga which is less than 5km from your base, then we should forget about Baga. I will inform the Chief of Staff to redeploy the men to other places that they can be useful.” In a video that has gone viral, Governor Zulum said “it is a complete sabotage. I cannot end my interview without clearly stating what happened yesterday. As far as I am concerned, there was no Boko Haram yesterday. It was a serious shooting by the Nigerian armed forces while “residing” in Baga. The situation is very embarassing.”

These statements by the governor of Borno State, who is its Chief Security Officer, indicts the Nigerian military but this is not the first time a prominent individual has accused the military of sabotaging the nation’s war againt the Boko Haram terrorists. As president and commander of the armed forces, former President Goodluck Jonathan had openly told Nigerians and the world that there are Boko Haram apologists and sympathizers within his government and the military. During a church service at the National Ecumenical Center in Abuja as part of the annual Armed Forces Remembrace Day celebration, the BBC quoted president Jonathan as saying “some of them are in the executive arm of government, some of them are in the legislative arm of government, while some of them are in the judiciary. Some of them are also in the armed forces, the police and other security agencies...during the civil war, we knew and we could even predict where the enemy was coming from but the challenge we have today is more complicated. Someone said that the situation is (so) bad that even if one’s son is a member, one will not even know. That means that if the person plant a bomb behind your house, you wont know.”

When we marry this 2012 statement made by former President Goodluck Jonathan with the recent statements of Governor Babagana Zulum, we would be correct to submit that there are members of the Nigerian military, specifically the Army, who are intentionally sabotaging the government’s fight againt the Boko Haram sect. The lamentation of major stakeholders in the security architecture of this country gives substance to the widespread rumour that because some senior officers in the Nigerian military make money from the continuing Boko Haram conflict, they do not want it to end.

It is important to state that after the attack on Governor Zulum and the accusations he leveled against soldiers, the Nigerian military had promised to investigate the matter and it has since denied Governor Zulum’s claims that Nigerian soldiers are those who fired at his convoy. While the acccusation and denial between Governor Babagana Zulum and the Nigerian Army continued, the Northern Governors Forum (NGF) released a statement describing the attack on one of them as “callous and reprehensible” noting that the attack was done to frustrate the Borno governor’s efforts towards reducing the sufferings of the internally displaced people in the state – because the incident happened when the governor was taking food supplies to IDPs.

We also remember that a kidnap kingpin in Taraba State, Hamisu Wadume, implicated Nigerian soldiers over his escape when he was arrested on August 6^th 2019 by a team of anti-crime police officers. Wadume was being taken to Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, when soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire on the police team and killed three officers. After Wadume was rearrested, he told reporters at the Force Headquarters in Abuja that “on our way out of Ibi, some soldiers opened fire on the vehicle I was being transported in and killed some police officers. The soldiers then took me to their headquarters and cut off the handcuff from my hands and set me free.” Although the Nigerian Army accepted that its soldiers were responsible for the shooting of the police vehicle that killed three policemen, it claimed that misinformation and the lack of communication between the police and the army led to the sad incidence. To further the narrative of sabotage within the Nigerian military, 356 soldiers, most of whom are serving in the Northeast region of the country, wrote a letter to the Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, indicating their willingness to resign from the military citing “lost of interest” in the fight againt Boko Haram due to poor weapons, unimproved allowances and continuous loss of their colleagues to Boko Haram attacks – which many blamed on the antics of the military top brass.

Now, while the northeast is the epicenter of the Boko Haram terror and insurgency, the two other regions of the north; the northwest and the northcentral, are also experiencing widespread insecurity through the activities of bandits, armed pastorialists, armed robbers and kidnappers. In the first seven months of this year (January to July 2020), there have been more than 800 incidences of kidnappings in Nigeria, with most of it happening in the north, particularly on the Kaduna – Abuja federal highway. In a recent article titled “The Giant North Weeps,” Veteran journalist Dan Agbese counseled that there is no need for us to pretend that the north is safe. He wrote that “we may all pretend all we want but no one can deny this, even if the temptation to be untrue to oneself for a mess of pottage cannot be resisted: Northern Nigeria is in distress, gripped by the cold hands of insurgency, bandits, kidnappers and assorted criminals. The region, once the most peaceful in the land, has become the most violent. Daily, the killlings go on and daily the blood of the innocent flows. And daily despair, hopelessness and desperation among the people deepens. This ought not to be so.”

Indeed, the north which used to enjoy relative peace has become a place where lives no longer matter. For instance, Plateau State was once known as the “home of peace and tourism” but today, bloodshed has replaced the peace and tourism on the plateau. From Southern Kaduna to Zamfara, from Kogi to Borno, from Taraba to Yobe and from Niger to Benue, the story is the same. Every day, we are witnesses to the sad and unfortunate reality that the lives of ordinary Nigerians are the most worthless in the world today. The insecurity situation in the north is pervasive such that even in President Muhammadu Buhari’s home state of Katsina, the story and pains of uncontrolled killings, kidnappings and destruction of property is rife just as there seems to be no reprieve for the common man.

Although the jury is not completely out on the actions and inactions of officers and men of the Nigerian military who sabotages the country’s fight againt Boko Haram terrorism and other forms of insecurity in northern Nigeria, the time is ticking out for the current government to  thoroughly investigate this issue so as to bring to book and to nemesis the bad eggs within the military who do not wish well for Nigeria and Nigerians. Until the country arrests these saboteurs within the military, it is not yet uhuru with the security of lives and property in northern Nigeria.

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