As the extremist Boko Haram sect steps up at tacks in Nigeria’s North-East region, the former Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, had made a shocking prediction, saying Africa’s most populous nation would most likely continue to suffer terrorist attacks for the next 20 years.
The former Army chief made the remark when he appeared for screening as a non-career ambassador before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs chaired by Senator Mohammed Bulkachuwa. He attributed Nigeria’s inability to solve the myriad of security problems facing the nation to logistics and insufficiency of funds.
He said: “Unless certain things are done, this insecurity will continue because the truth must be told, it may take another 20 years for the country to surmount the problem of insurgency and that is the truth.” According to him, the Boko Haram insurgents through indoctrination are winning more and more communities to their side, aside from the problem of ungovernable spaces in the area and across the country.
His words: “My state (Borno), is an epicentre, where this indoctrination has penetrated so deep. They (insurgents) have won the communities to their side. That is why they (communities) keep Boko Haram. So, it is complex, it requires a whole of government approach to solving this, military action or activity is just one aspect. One mistake that we have been making is assuming that only the military can solve this. It is not. There are political, social, economic aspects that need to be addressed.
“Development should be progressive, there should be road everywhere, there should be employment, schools, hospitals all over. Yesterday (Wednesday), I counted five local government areas in Borno State that do not have a good access road to those places. In North-West, North-Central, there are so many ungovernable spaces, which the insurgents are penetrating. The places don’t have schools, hospitals and so on and education is very fundamental.”
It is most embarrassing that these confessions were made by the immediate past Chief of Army Staff who had never failed to promise Nigerians in his heydays in office that Boko Haram’s extinction was a matter of days. Buratai’s declaration only implies one thing and that is security in Nigeria has collapsed and the military has failed. There are no pretexts about that fact.
The question is: if it will take more than 20 years to defeat Boko Haram in the country, what had the service chiefs been doing for the more than five years they were in office? It simply meant they were doing nothing other than misleading Nigerians and contending that Boko Haram had been technically defeated or even decimated. It is reprehensible that Buratai would make those assertions after the nation had invested so much in human and capital resources in the war. No wonder not much has been achieved in the anti-insurgency combat more than a decade since it began.
The Minister of Defence, Major- General Bashir Magashi (rtd) may have corroborated Buratai’s statement when he recently proclaimed that weaponless Nigerians should defend themselves against bandits and other criminal elements including perhaps insurgents. Unfortunately, this is where we have found ourselves.
Magashi’s call is particularly more embarrassing in a country where it is unlawful to purchase and carry firearms. So, Magashi is asking Nigerians to violate the law of this country and look for firearms anywhere they can get them to protect themselves? It is startling that our governors and lawmakers failed to challenge the minister and draw the attention of the President to his statement.
Buratai’s revelation is a huge responsibility for Buhari to increase the tempo of the anti-terror war in the country. Though some Nigerians consider the former army chief’s pronouncement as condemnable and hypocritical because it was overdue and might serve as a boost for the terrorists, thus, heightening the existing insecurity in the land, it is an eye-opener to the authorities and a reminder of the need to entirely remake our usual approach to the war.
We are certain that this disclosure may not be unusual to the Federal Government as the former army chief must have given the President a broad hint of the development while in office. Since the information is in the public domain, it is expected that Buhari will act swiftly. Government’s presence in all ungoverned spaces in the country is expedient. Also, there is an urgent need to consolidate control over those areas that were previously held by Boko Haram. This will guarantee that the terrorists don’t easily operate from there.
Retiring service chiefs have to desist from making declarations in contradiction to earlier claims of military successes made while in office to forestall a repeat of Buratai’s “true confession”. More importantly, Buhari has to radically reform the military and commence a sweeping investigation of military procurement over the past five years, which has been running into billions of dollars annually. Such investigations may uncover fraudulent arms deals that cost the nation so much money.
The problem at hand requires a well-galvanised national approach to surmount considering that it is more of an asymmetric-cum hybrid warfare as against the conventional ones that can easily be confronted and defeated. Therefore, there must be synergy among all the security agencies as lack of it is equally responsible for the lingering security defiance we face.
We must advise that playing politics with the insurgency would create a festering wound that could consume all facets of Nigeria’s resources. This is what is happening now. Specifically, we think that Nigeria should have a national counter-insurgency strategy hinged on economic development, and the military strategy can pick up from there.
Since our country is faced with one of its worst security challenges from independence in 1960, stringent efforts must be made to break the stalemate in this war against insurgency. At this point, we must face reality and tell ourselves the home truth. The military needs to be innovative and creative to counter the ravaging terrorists.