In the past few months, Nigerians have
watched with horror and trepidation, the continuous killing of innocent
Nigerians in the North-East zone of our country. It has been seemingly a
situation of helplessness as many propositions fly in the air of what
this is and what that is not. Some say the Boko Haram insurgents are a
formidable and invincible group of well-organised agitators. Are they?
Others say that they are better resourced and equipped than the Joint
Task Force of the Nigerian Armed Forces and so the soldiers run away
whenever they hear that the Boko Haram insurgents are approaching.
Really? A few others insist that Boko Haram is still a very organised,
hierarchical, and ideologically bound group with a supreme decision
making body known as the Shura Council that meets regularly to take
decisions on its targets and activities. True?
While one will easily debate these views,
it is safe to say that Boko Haram remains a loose but lethal group
whose bloody operations have inflicted pains on many and have
reconfigured and disfigured the North. I spent some time watching most
of the videos released so far by the Boko Haram sect and they gave me
very interesting insights. What may be true, however, is that there are
probable underlying political economic issues that are currently
sustaining the insurgency. It is a yet-to-be cracked complex network
involving the security agencies, politicians, informants, and community
leaders, among others. The insurgency has become a very lucrative
venture for these vested interests and until these issues are unearthed
and dealt with, we may only be confronting symptoms without treating
the real disease. It is very frightening to imagine that the continuous
massacre of defenceless innocent lives may be of potential or actual
benefit to anyone. But that is the reality of our time and I will point
you to a few directions.
The first thing that is evident from the
videos is that these insurgents are not as many as we are made to
believe. It does not appear that there are up to 1000 active Boko Haram
fighters within their fold. They may be very deadly and blood-thirsty
but they get fewer by the day – maybe less than 500. That is why they
embark on constant propaganda to exaggerate their strength. They do not
live in any jungle or in caves as we are made to believe. The terrain
has a semi-arid geography with very sparse vegetation. Even without any
military training, I reckon that detecting them from aerial surveillance
equipment and bombarding them adequately should not be rocket science.
So, how come the same Nigerian military that excelled in ECOMOG and
other external assignments across the world are suddenly said to be
subdued by such a rag-tag group of insurgents? This sounds unbelievable.
What is believable however is that Boko Haram insurgents may have many
sympathisers even within the security agencies. Besides, the trillions
of naira spent annually in combating this insurgency is keeping some
people busy and making others laugh to their banks. This is where the
complaint of motivation comes in. For that cycle of funding to continue,
Boko Haram must remain alive and effective. For them to continue to
derive those benefits means that the status quo must remain. In a
situation of instability, structures of accountability are either weak
or completely absent. If you extinguish Boko Haram, then you have taken
away their cash cow.
The second aspect amplifies the first in a
way that is clearer to many observers. The “successes” recorded by
Boko Haram might not be unconnected to these alleged contacts and
sympathy they have within the security agencies. Now, think about how
some police officers were allegedly linked to the “successful” attack by
the Ombatse cult on security agents a few months ago in Nasarawa State.
Can we cast our minds momentarily back to the operations of the then
militants in the Niger Delta and how they might have collaborated with
insiders in the Joint Task Force to always know how and when to escape
a few minutes before the soldiers arrived to bombard their camps? Some
of us imagined that they were invincible but now we know better. How
else will you explain that Boko Haram insurgents will operate for five
hours in a state under an emergency rule without any help coming from
any of the security agencies supposedly patrolling the streets? In some
of the recent operations, it was reported that the insurgents allegedly
over-powered the military and chased them away. It then took one week
before the insurgents returned to that community to conduct a successful
raid that led to the death of more than 190 persons. One would expect
that even if the soldiers were dislodged at the first time, they would
have gone back to get reinforcement and come back to that community
rather than leave the community on its own. That second successful
invasion was therefore preventable. Furthermore, how does one explain
that Boko Haram insurgents get regular supply of weapons and military
camouflage that they have used in some of their operations even when the
borders are closed?
While I leave the reader to ponder with
these questions, let us talk about the third issue. The issue of
protection money. Apart from occasional ransoms collected from
kidnapping and cash collected from successful bank robberies, another
alleged source of funding for Boko Haram insurgency is the so-called
protection money. Many politicians and businessmen of Northern
extraction have allegedly paid some amount of money to insurgents at one
time or the other in exchange for protection. According to informed
sources, it is either Boko Haram members or their representatives
contact these people by phone or write letters to them. They will
usually ask them to drop a particular amount of money to someone
somewhere or get killed. Instead of alerting the security agencies,
these characters prefer to obediently assemble the cash and drop it at
the point requested by the insurgents. Most of the politicians you see
today pretending not to know about Boko Haram have paid their share of
protection money. Can we pause and count how many millionaires and
prominent politicians have been killed since the Boko Haram onslaught
started? Does that suggest something to you?
Another direction I wish to point to is
the probability that the continuation of insecurity in the North-East
may mean that no elections may hold there in 2015. Whether we agree or
not, this will potentially reduce the apprehension of politicians in
the ruling party. Looking at the 2011 presidential election, the
North-East states were predominantly won by the opposition Congress for
Progress Change except Adamawa and Taraba states. States like Bauchi and
Borno gave the CPC Presidential candidate 81.69 and 77.25 per cent
votes respectively. With the recent exit of key figures in Adamawa State
politics from the PDP into the All Progressives Congress, it is easy to
predict the outcome of the next elections in that state. That leaves
only Taraba State possibly for the ruling party. Even that is debatable
judging from the poor health of Governor Danbaba Suntai whose support
base was key to the outcome of the last elections. For a Federal
Government that may be going into elections at the edge of its
popularity, the more there are red spots where conflicts may prevent the
electoral body from conducting elections, the higher the chances to
concentrate efforts and resources on its (PDP) strongholds.
My final point is the probability that
these insurgents are embedded amongst our communities. They are ours
sons, brothers, boyfriends, cousins and husbands. We know them. Don’t
we? But we are either too scared to talk or we are busy enjoying the
bounties that they bring home. That is why they are always masked. In
the video, they spoke fluent Kanuri. On close scrutiny, one will imagine
that the location of their rehearsals is not anywhere in the
wilderness. It is somewhere just next door. There was a brave man who
once denounced his son in Maidugiri and pointed him out to the JTF
soldiers and was shot while trying to escape. As a father, I know the
pains the man would have endured to take such an action. It is similar
to the sacrifices of the people we have come to know as “civilian JTF”.
These are fearless youths in these communities who probably know who
some of these insurgents are. They were regularly reporting them to the
security agencies. Rather than come to apprehend these Boko Haram
members, these patriotic informants get killed instead by the
insurgents. So who exposed them? Out of utter frustration these young
men resorted to self-help. The effectiveness of these “civilian JTF”
members in policing some of the communities and the support and
intelligence they have given to some successful military operations
support the view that these insurgents may be within reach.
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar
alluded to this some days ago. So, why are these “civilian JTF” members
not supported, trained, equipped and funded?
With this wicked bloodletting still going
on, it is time for all of us to pause and go beyond the simplistic
narratives of the insurgency and dig deeper to expose the conflict
economy that sustains it. It is a web of corruption, extortions and
blackmail that somehow benefits the elite to the detriment of the poor.
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