- It’s not whether the weather will delay war on terror, but whether we are on course
The Nigeria Army surprised quite a few Nigerians when it indicated that the weather was an impediment to the war on terror. That shows that Mother Nature has given the militant sect Boko Haram some wriggle room and breath of fresh air.
In a meeting with the President, Muhammadu Buhari, the Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Gabriel Olonisakin, revealed this obstacle, as well as logistics challenges.
Hear him: “Of course, the challenges we are looking at are the issues of probably the weather as it were and some other logistics that we feel we should have so that the mandate can be quickly delivered.”
The matter raised a question in the minds of Nigerians. Is the weather challenge going to compromise the deadline of December for the elimination of the militant group? The defence chief replied, “We have not said that. The mandate is that we should clear Boko Haram from the occupied territories and ensure that we reclaim all the lost grounds. That is exactly what we are doing.”
More poignantly, he said, “it is a military operation and military operations have timelines and these timelines we are working on assiduously.”
In spite of the clever turns of phrase, the general has shown that the December deadline may not be sacrosanct. There is nothing wrong with that. Wars are not historically fought on deadlines. During the Jonathan years, the top brass declared deadlines that were dead even on arrival. They became a matter of comedy.
Wars cannot be fought on deadlines but on timelines. Too many imponderables occur in the course of hostilities to rely on any form of deadlines. Some of the major battles in the contemporary world were prosecuted on false presumption that they would end soon, including the First World War and the Second World War. The Nigerian Civil War began with a cynical phrase called “police action.” But it lasted thirty bloody months.
If the military operates on timelines, it is acceptable. Timelines are adjustable. Deadlines reflect a sense of superior knowledge that replaces assumptions with certainties. That is not in the purview of war.
On weather, we cannot underestimate the factor in war. Of course, we are in the rainy season, and rains can cause flood and gullies and various forms of topographical nightmares in battle. It can also compromise vision with fog. But for the army to list it as a factor holding the army back reflects strategic naivety or it might have figured it in its December deadline promise and that is a risk.
Reckoning with the weather should always be crucial to any calculations of timelines and even assessment of tactical and strategic advantages. Historians have wondered what the world would look like today if a blizzard did not cripple German tanks near Moscow. Hitler with his generals misread the weather, and his mammoth military collapsed.
In spite of this, the military on General Olonisakin’s watch has scored significant victories. The Nigeria Army seemed coy in the face of Boko Haram depredations and impunity. Now it has effectively reduced it to sporadic raids and suicide bombs.
The Defence Chief also revealed that the president has assented to its demands for logistics support, which shows that the army’s strategies and tactics will enjoy greater resources and consequently more victory.
While we want the war on militants to end even tomorrow, we are less interested in tantalising deadlines. All we want is steady extirpation of the radical death machines in reasonable time.
