The death of Lt.-Col. Otos Umusu, Commanding Officer, 118 Task Force Battalion, Operation Lafiya Dole, in Borno State, in an ambush recently was another awful loss of life in the war on Boko Haram terror. In rising levels of battlefield casualties, Boko Haram insurgents had also killed a few other Commanding Officers, including Lt.-Col. Abu Ali, the 272 Task Force Tank Battalion CO, and Lt.-Col. B. Umar of the 114 Tank Battalion.
In the past seven years, hundreds of Nigerian soldiers have lost their lives to the war on terror. But these recent deaths of some senior military officers made chilling headlines because of who they were: commanders. The serial killings of senior military commanders in war are not only a tragedy for the military, they are a colossal loss to their families and the country. It demoralises. This is a worrying sign that Boko Haram jihadists are far from being well degraded and decimated. What this development signifies is that the military need to go back to the drawing board.
Sadly, while the Nigerian troops are slugging it out with the insurgents in the Sambisa forest, the terror group has been targeting military commanders for elimination by laying ambush. The nasty jihadists have also resumed their mass killings through suicide bombings in markets and other soft targets. According to the military, two schoolgirl suicide bombers killed 45 people and wounded dozens in a coordinated attack on a crowded market in Madagali, Adamawa State. Another set of two girls, one said not to be older than seven, and the second about eight, died in blasts in a crowded area near a Maiduguri market. Early in the year, the Islamic insurrectionists carried out a night attack that left 86 people dead in Dalori village, located four kilometres outside of Maiduguri, the Borno capital.
It is distressing that while our political leadership and the military authorities continue to celebrate the decimation of the terror group, the reality at the theatre of operations shows that the war is still being fought with blood and horror. Scores of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded since President Muhammadu Buhari declared the uprising “technically defeated” a year ago. How wrong he was.
Though the military authorities say the troops have been provided with “better equipment to fish out Boko Haram and deal with them completely,” some reports claim that the major cause of casualties on troops at the moment is still poor equipment. “At the moment, the equipment in the theatre is mostly worn out and almost obsolete. Provision of adequate equipment is the only answer for now. Troops’ confidence is a function of sound and functional equipment,” a report says.
Globally, Boko Haram is still a deadly group in spite of the sustained military action aimed at weakening it. While Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria accounted for 72 per cent of all deaths from terrorism in 2015, according to a report, ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaeda were responsible for 74 per cent of these deaths. In the face of Boko Haram’s renewed and targeted attacks, it is simply a fact that this war is far from being over. It is a strange, asymmetrical war, but a war just the same that must be won.
Developing a strategy to accomplish that goal is daunting. But what can the Buhari government do in response? Bursting the rump of Boko Haram will involve facing the stark realities and changing operational engagements. Regrettably, the government has not been handling the changing nature of Boko Haram terror properly. Though the Buhari administration has recorded outstanding successes against the insurgents since mid-2015, defeating Islamist terrorism requires more than putting boots on the ground.
We must be under no illusions about its root cause. The evil ideology underpinning the insurgency must be discredited without any pretensions. Many youths are still trapped under the sway of radical extremism, not because of poverty or unemployment, but by being immersed in a dangerous interpretation of the tenets of a religion. It is not only specious, it is foolhardy and dangerous to pretend about the religious undercurrents of Boko Haram terrorism. But under the law as it is said, murder is murder and terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the belief system in whose name these crimes are sometimes committed. There is no argument about that.
Therefore, Boko Haram terror threat can only be contained by targeting its core leadership and destroying its operational capacities, as well as by seeking to discredit its odious ideology. This calls for new intelligence efforts to cut off its financial and weapons supplies, pre-empt suicide bombers, protect the nation’s borders from foreign jihadists, crack down on local collaborators and filth columnists, and improve emergency responses.
