Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, appears to have made significant progress towards realising his stated ambition of carving out an “Islamic state” from the present northern part of Nigeria, after announcing the capture last week of the hilly Borno State town of Gwoza. In a manner that is fast becoming fashionable among jihadists around the world, Shekau, whose group has been waging a campaign of terror against the Nigerian state in the last five years, has reportedly declared the captured territory a caliphate, to be administered under strict Islamic law, otherwise known as Sharia.
This development, though denied by the Nigerian military, is bound to cast a doubt in the minds of many about the ability of the Nigerian state to effectively defend its territorial integrity in the event of an external aggression. Boko Haram’s territorial claim, contained in its latest video, is a strong evidence of the failing nature of the Nigerian state. Evidently, it is also indicative of the fact that all is not well with the military, which, until now, used to be seen as one of the most formidable, most professional and most disciplined fighting forces anywhere.
While Shekau, in the video, claimed to have been given victory at Gwoza by Allah, Maj.-Gen. Chris Olukolade, the Director of Defence Information, said, “Any group of terrorists laying claim to any portion of the country will not be allowed to get away with the expression of delusion and crime.” In the same breath, he was also quoted as saying, “Appropriate military operations to secure the area from the activities of the bandits are still ongoing.”
What Boko Haram has done in Gwoza, just like some of its daring bomb attacks in sensitive parts of Abuja, the Federal Capital, and some other parts of the country, is a wake-up call to those saddled with the responsibility of securing the country. It is an indication that nowhere is safe until that murderous group is rooted out and its leadership and sponsors identified and made to account for their actions.
The greatest mistake the Nigerian authorities can make now is to assume that only a small portion of our territory is currently under the control of the mass murderers, whose activities fit into the template used by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, al-Qaeda, Taliban and other forerunners of IS. After they were smoked out of Afghanistan and Yemen, the terrorists congregated in Mali, where they captured large swathes of its territory, forcing the soldiers to flee. It took the intervention of the combined forces of West African countries under the leadership of France to evict them from Mali. They are also raging in Libya, now an ungoverned territory after the demise of Muammar Gaddaffi.
Similarly, after launching out from Syria, the IS (formerly ISIS) swooped on Iraq, chased away the soldiers and took control of a large portion of the country, including oil fields and a large dam. It has taken the aerial intervention of the United States of America to bring back the fleeing Iraqi soldiers into combat.
Islamists all over the world are currently in search of a country they can call theirs, administered under the law that permits amputation, stoning to death and decapitation of those perceived to have offended the law. Gwoza may just be a tiny piece of land; but if prompt action is lacking, it could become the foothold jihadists from other parts of the world need to attack and achieve in Nigeria what they failed to accomplish in Mali.
In case anybody is under the illusion that there are some foreign powers out there waiting to come to Nigeria’s aid, the experience in Iraq where the Iraqis have had to fight their own battle is a sufficient warning. President Barack Obama has said that no American soldiers will be sent to a foreign land to die.
In the video, Shekau reportedly put up a show of force, with hundreds of his fighters displaying sophisticated weapons, including Armoured Personnel Carriers, machine guns mounted on pick-up vans, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles. His boasts that “Allah commands us to rule Gwoza by Islamic law; in fact, he commands us to rule the rest of the world, not only Nigeria,” is an indication of his wider ambition.
This is why the Nigerian military must get their act together and flush out Boko Haram. It is not by chance that the capture of Gwoza has coincided with a period when soldiers are reportedly fleeing from the battlefield and their wives are protesting against their ill-equipped and ill-motivated husbands being sent to the warfront. This raises the question of what has been happening to the trillions of naira that have been voted for defence over the past years.
If it is indeed true that the soldiers are not adequately equipped to face the battle against terror, then the fault should be with the government. President Goodluck Jonathan, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, has it as a duty and responsibility to ensure that the military are well equipped and funded. The corruption that is currently destroying the military must be wiped out so that our military can become a respectable fighting force once again.
