The insurgent group claimed it was able to free its operatives in detention at the heavily fortified barracks during the attack. But the military denied this, arguing instead that the terrorists’ attempt was in response to the intensity of attacks on their strongholds in camps at Talala, Monguzum, Sambisa Forest, Gwoza, Mandara mountains as well as in the general area of Lake Chad. The fact however is that the insurgents have continued to attack villages and communities, with attendant mass slaughter and rampant destruction of property. In one of such attacks on a military base in Buni Yadi last week, they killed 12 soldiers and 13 policemen. There were also reports last Monday that the insurgents had taken control and hoisted their flags in some communities in Adamawa, Jigawa and Bauchi states.

The Chibok Turning Point
The embarrassment of the kidnapping of the over 200 students in Chibok is that, many said it was indicative of the fact that claims of successes by the military in the fight against the insurgents were not true. The military added to the embarrassment when it claimed to have rescued all but eight of the abducted girls, a claim that was promptly discovered to be false.

But even more galling to most Nigerians are claims that the military and the police have failed to rise to the occasion when informed of impending attacks by the insurgent group. Danuma Mphur, the chairman of Parent Teacher Association, PTA, Government Girls Secondary School, where the girls were abducted, claimed he informed the Local Government Chairman and the police when he heard information from some herdsmen three hours before the arrival of the insurgents at the school, that the terrorists were heading for Chibok. The chairman claimed he informed the military commander and the police and implored them to beef up security in anticipation of the incursion into the town.

But the back-up expected did not come until the insurgents arrived to take away the girls about three hours later. An international rights organisation, Human Rights Watch, also said some Fulani herdsmen confirmed to it that they alerted the military of the impending attack on Chibok when they sighted the insurgents moving in a convoy of motorcycles and lorries toward the town while grazing their cattle. The military has denied the claims and said the reinforcement it sent when it learnt of the abduction was misled as a result of false information.

Just like in Chibok, eyewitnesses, victims and survivors of attacks by the insurgents have always claimed that soldiers failed to respond to their calls for help or abandoned their posts just before the arrival of the terrorists. The military has always denied this allegation even as it emphasised that there is no way soldiers can cover every inch of ground in the areas affected by the insurgency.

A Damning Verdict On Nigeria Military From Abroad
However, the view from the United States, one of the countries that have offered to help Nigeria end the insurgence, is that there may the truth in some of the claims that Nigerian troops are, to put it mildly, cautious in confronting the Boko Haram insurgents. “We’re now looking at a military force that is, quite frankly, becoming afraid to even engage. The United States doesn’t have the capacity, the capability to go rescue every kidnapped person around the world,” General Mark Welsh, the US Air Force Chief of Staff, told the country’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee early last month.

An analyst told this magazine last week that recent stories that some communities were already confronting members of Boko Haram with cutlasses, bows and arrows, dane guns and sundry basic weapons testifies to the increasing lack of faith in the ability of the military to provide them with protection. But Robert Jackson, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, also told the committee that the insurgency in Nigeria festered because of refusal of the country to change its approach to tackling it. He added that the country has relied on deploying brute force against Boko Haram, with the troops committing a lot of human rights violations, a charge that the Human Rights Watch had also leveled against Nigerian soldiers operating in the North-East many times in the past.

“From our own difficult experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, we know that turning the tide of an insurgency requires more than force. The state must demonstrate to its citizens that it can protect them and offer them opportunity. When soldiers destroy towns, kill civilians and detain innocent people with impunity, mistrust takes root.” The Nigerian Military has always denied that its men engaged in willful violation of human rights.

But a more damning claim from the United States on why Nigeria has not been able to defeat Boko Haram was made two weeks ago by Sarah Sewall, the country’s Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights, during a hearing by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sewall, who appeared before the committee alongside a Pentagon top Africa official, Amanda Dory, said Nigeria’s military fight against Boko Haram has been hindered by corruption as, according to her, despite the country’s $5.8bn security budget for 2014, “corruption prevents supplies as basic as bullets and transport vehicles from reaching the front lines of the struggle against Boko Haram”. The Under Secretary also told the committee that morale was low among the Nigerian troops, with many soldiers deserting their duty posts in the 7th Army Division established purposely last year to fight the insurgents.

Faltering Despite Huge Budgetary Allocations
Maybe, the novelty in the allegation that corruption is impeding Nigeria’s war against terror is that it is coming from abroad. The two chambers of the Nigerian National Assembly had in the recent past raised eyebrows over complaints that the troops fighting the insurgents in the North-east were not getting their allowances and were not properly kitted for operations despite huge budgetary allocations to the Defence sector in the past three years.

The opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, has also repeatedly called for a probe of the military budgets in view of speculations that the troops were not being well catered for in the battle field. In 2012, N920 billion, a quarter of Nigeria’s budget for that year, was allocated to the security and defence sector. In the 2013 the allocation was N968 billion, or a quarter of the Federal budget. In this year’s budget, the sum of N1.055 trillion or about 20 per cent of the total Federal budget of N4.92 trillion is allocated to defence and security, according to figures recently released by Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Finance Minister.

The seemingly humongous allocations have failed to reflect on men fighting in the field in terms of better welfare, equipment and kitting, according to many observers. As such, confrontations with better armed and better motivated Boko Haram insurgents always leave the Nigerian troops worse off. Alarmed by this fact, Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State had in the aftermath of the insurgents’ attacks on some villages in Gwoza Local Government Area of the state, where over 100 people were killed, told journalists that, with the present state of affairs, like the Americans argued, it would be impossible to defeat Boko Haram. The governor lamented that members of Boko Haram seem to be more motivated than men of the Nigerian armed forces, given the impunity they carried out their attacks for several hours without being challenged.

“But the bottom line is that we need more resources, more vote on ground. In all fairness to the officers and men of the Nigerian Army and Police, they are doing their best given the circumstances they have found themselves. But, honestly, Boko Haram are better armed and are better motivated than our own troops,” said Shetimma. “I made it emphatically clear to Mr. President that the Boko Haram are better armed and better motivated. Anybody who is following events in this country can attest to the fact that they have a very smooth sail overrunning communities, killing people,” Shettima said of his meeting with the President.

The assertions by the governor however did not go down well with the Presidency, which accused him of trying to put the Nigerian military down. In a press conference he addressed the next day, Doyin Okupe, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, described the claim by Shettima that the military cannot defeat the Boko Haram insurgents in its present state as false given the past gallantry of Nigerian troops during operations across West Africa and increased budgetary allocations to it in recent times.

According to the presidential aide, the war against the insurgents has been difficult for Nigerian soldiers because of the nature of the enemy: “We are certainly not involved in conventional warfare but are rather engaged in guerrilla warfare with all its unpredictability. However, it is heartwarming that our military, which has participated in numerous international peace-keeping operations where it helped to quell insurgencies, had acquired the sophistication and necessary capacity to adapt to the ever-changing modus operandi of the insurgents.”