by Ayorinde Oluokun In his nationwide broadcast to mark the 2014 Democracy Day last week, President Goodluck Jonathan declared that the 14 April abduction of over 200 girls from a secondary school in Chibok community, Borno State, has created worldwide awareness about the brutal activity of the Boko Haram insurgent group which has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The assertion by the President is apt, given the worldwide offer of support even from the most unlikely places to help rescue the girls and ultimately, to help fight the insurgent group to submission. But even much more, though also thinly acknowledged by the President, the abduction of the girls has brought into sharp focus the ability of Nigeria’s military to defend the territorial integrity of the country. The verdict of most local and international analysts and observers is that the Nigerian military has failed to discharge its responsibility to the country well with the way it has allowed the Boko Haram insurgency to fester since 2009. As such, the military has found itself reeling under a barrage of criticisms from local and international observers and analysts who queried its failure to rescue the girls over a month after their abduction and continuous impudent decimation of communities by the Boko Haram insurgents. In need of some ego boosting, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, the Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, and Nigeria’s topmost military chief, last week played host to at least two groups on a solidarity visit to the Abuja Defence Headquarters. “We want our girls back, I can tell you that our military can and will do it, but where they are held, can we go there with force? Nobody should say Nigerian military does not know what it is doing; we can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back,” the CDS told members of the Citizen Initiative for Security Awareness, CISA, who were on a solidarity to his office in Abuja last Monday. Badeh also told his visitors that the military has been incapacitated in the battle against Boko Haram because of the nature of the insurgency, which involved fighting against Nigerians. “If we were fighting an external war, they would have been begging us to withdraw. We are not happy at all, because we are killing our own kinsmen and we are killing mostly the youths. We cannot afford to eliminate our youths; who are we going to hand over Nigeria to? We can’t kill them,“ said the CDS, who recalled that the Nigerian military has distinguished itself in helping countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone end their civil wars and return to democracy. “We are neither politicians nor religious bodies, but appreciate our military and we know they are doing their best. We are trying to tell the leadership of the Nigerian military that ordinary Nigerian is behind and appreciate them,“ Chidi Omeje, the coordinator of the group told the CDS. The Military Not Doing Its Best The assertion that the ‘military is doing its best’ is one that many Nigerians living in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, the three states which have been the focal point of insurgency since 2009, may however not agree with. The feelings of the generality of Nigerians living in the Boko Haram-infested region was succinctly expressed by Dr. Bulama Mali Gubio, the spokesperson of Borno Elders Forum, when he was asked last week to state what his people had gained from the practice of democracy in the past five years. “Apart from the killing and maiming of our people, we have not witnessed anything good in the past five years. Our economy has crumbled, our schools are no longer safe, thousands of houses have been destroyed and we have been abandoned. Democracy has left us in the woods and it will be foolhardy for us to say we are celebrating anything,” said Gubio. He added that essentials of democracy like security of life and property have eluded the people of Borno State in the past five years. Gubio’s sentiment is one shared by many Nigerians living across North-east Nigerian who have watched as the Boko Haram evolved from just a misguided group with focus of attacks on officers of the security agencies and public offices to an insurgent group. In spite of the different claims by the military that it is having the upper hand in the battle against the insurgents, the terrorist group had by May 2013 driven away local government chiefs, successfully closed down police stations, schools and other public offices and were flying their flags and preaching openly in over 20 towns in Borno State. The group was bold enough to attempt a take over of an Army barrack in Bama during an operation in which it also destroyed the town’s police station, prison and abducted some officers. Obviously at the prompting of the Generals, President Jonathan in May last year declared a state of emergency to give the military unfettered powers to chase out the insurgents. This enabled the military to launch a big offensive in which it deployed its arsenal to root out the insurgents from their strongholds across the three North-east states. True, the military seemed to have achieved some successes in curbing the insurgency with the offensive, with the hitherto daily reports of bombings and indiscriminate killings by unidentified “gunmen” in Maiduguri and Damaturu, the capitals of Borno and Yobe respectively, and other areas of the two states where the insurgents had been very active becoming fewer. With the support of vigilance group, otherwise known as the Civilian JTF, the military was able to root out the insurgents from Maiduguri city. A week into the offensive and declaration of state of emergency in the three states, the Armed Forces were bold enough to declare that they had put the insurgents on the run. In a statement, General Chris Olukolade, Director of Defence Information, declared that the extremist group was in “disarray”, with its members fleeing to Nigeria’s borders with Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Indeed, the military succeeded in confining activities of Boko Haram to the communities near Nigerian borders with the three countries for a while. But it would seem that the group just went into hibernation, during which period it drew up a new blueprint for its terrorist activities given the subsequent ferocity of its attacks. In December last year, the group launched one of its most daring attacks yet on the Air Force base and International Airport in Maiduguri, during which it destroyed a couple of helicopters, vehicles, buildings and killed scores of people. The terrorist group followed this up with a couple of other attacks and President Jonathan, in December last year, asked the National Assembly to extend the state of emergency for another six months. However in spite of the extension of emergency rule, ferocious attacks by the insurgents continued. A Promise Not Kept? When he was taking office as the CDS January this year, Badeh had further raised hopes of Nigerians when he declared that the military would work to bring Boko Haram insurgency to an end by April 2014 in order not to go to the National Assembly to ask for another extension of the state of emergency. But Badeh said it was not the intention of the military chiefs to go lobbying the National Assembly for anything. “The security situation in the North-East must be brought to a complete stop before April 2014. We must bring it to a stop before April so that we will not have constitutional problems on our hands. We don’t want to go back to the Senate to start begging and lobbying. If we do our work cohesively, I can tell you, General (Kenneth) Minimah, (Chief of Army Staff) you will finish your work in no time,” the CDS said while taking over from his predecessor, Admiral Ola Ibrahim. Though the Defence Headquarters later clarified in a press statement that the remark by the CDS was meant to motivate commanders and troops to work harder toward restoration of normalcy as envisaged in the states under emergency rule, Badeh had also during his swearing-in early February assured President Jonathan that the new set of Service Chiefs would deploy new strategy to bring the Boko Haram insurgency to an end before the general elections in 2015. Contrary to that promise, however, insurgency and related security challenges have worsened. Some statistics indicate that over 2,000 Nigerians have been killed in various attacks by Boko Haram in the first three months of the appointment of the new service chiefs. Some of the major attacks attributed to the insurgents in the first quarter include the 26 January attack on a Catholic church at Waga Chakawa in Adamawa, which resulted in the death of 30 worshippers, part of the over 115 people killed in just two communities in Borno and Adamawa states in the first month of the year. Also, on 11 February, the terrorists killed over 67 people in Konduga in Borno State and at least, another 146 Nigerians during an attack on Izghe, Gwoza Local Government Area of the same state. The insurgent group also killed 43 pupils on 25 February, when it attacked the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Yobe State. On the first day of March, twin bomb blasts by Boko Haram left 52 people dead in Maiduguri, and while rescue operations were on at the scene of the blasts, another set of the insurgents attacked Mainok, a village about 50km from Maiduguri, killing 39. The next day, 35 persons – 32 civilians and three policemen – were killed during a fierce gunfight between insurgents and soldiers in Mafa, a community 45km east of Maiduguri, while on 4 March, the violent sect attacked Jakana, a village about 35km from Maiduguri, where 40 persons were killed. The insurgents on 14 March launched a daring attack on the famous Giwa Barracks in Fori neighbourhood of Maiduguri, which resulted in the death of scores of soldiers and the terrorists. 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.” The Problems Analysts who spoke to this magazine last week contended that lack of investment in training, failure to maintain equipment and corrupt procurement practices constitute the major bane of the of the Nigerian military. They pointed out that, contrary to the situation in the 1990s when Nigerian troops helped end the ethnic-motivated civil wars in sSierra Leone and Liberia, those sent to Mali in 2013 did not have the necessary equipment and training to join in the real fight against the al-Qaeda-backed Tuareg rebels. A recent report indicated that surveillance drones which Nigeria bought from an Israeli firm some years ago that might have been used to hunt for the more than 200 girls held by Islamist rebels, have been left grounded due to poor maintenance. The drones were reportedly bought in 2006 for deployment to Niger Delta to fight oil theft and kidnapping. But the manufacturers said the drones were never put to use as there has been no demand for spare parts or routine maintenance for unmanned vehicles from Nigeria. The machines reportedly cost between $15 million and $17 million each though. Rather, the Nigerian Air Force last year also unveiled its own locally-made drone it named Gulma at an Air Force base in Kaduna. But the drone has not flown since and the Air Force said last week that it was still training operators for the unmanned aircraft. There have also been reports of Nigerian soldiers losing their lives because their equipment failed to live up to expectation during confrontations with the insurgents. An unconfirmed report last year indicated that 70 soldiers on a mop-up operation were killed when they entered the Sambisa forest for an operation because the bomb dropped by an Air Force jet did not explode because it was expired. Sources also told this magazine that unlike the Nigerian military, the Boko Haram insurgents fight with weapons like rocket-propelled grenades, RPGs, which can take down an aircraft, and other sophisticated equipment. “Nigerian soldiers are brave but do not have much equipment,” noted an analyst. In the attack it launched on Bama Barracks last year during which it killed over 180 people, for example, the insurgent group displayed its substantial fire power with the deployment of many RPGs, machine guns and pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns. The attack the group mounted on Giwa Barracks earlier this year was no less spectacular. A recent report indicated that the militants had acquired the weapons through alliance with rebels who fought in the Libyan and Malian wars. Members of the insurgent group successfully used anti-aircraft gun on an Air Force jet during a raid on their enclave last year. A recent statement by the military indicated that a middle-aged man who was arrested in Borno State led the troops to a cache of weapons which included anti-aircraft guns, rocket propelled grenades as well as general purpose and other brands of machine guns which the insurgent group was planning to use for an attack. The weapons were found buried in the premises of one of the churches earlier burnt by the insurgents in Kalabalge Local Government Area of the state. Also recovered from the location were thousands of various calibres of rounds of ammunition and links. On the contrary, according to sources, most Nigerian troops confront the insurgents with AK-47 rifles, with no ballistic helmet or fragmental jacket, while relying on their superior military training to gain the upper hand. A source listed some of the equipment a modern day soldier should have in operations, but which Nigerian troops lacked, to include ballistic helmet, fragmental jacket, personal and special weapons mounted with special equipment like binoculars for accuracy, bayonet, night vision goggles, and hand grenades. There have been reports of soldiers dying because they ran out of out of ammunition to fight back during confrontation with Boko Haram insurgents as a result of rationing of bullets. This magazine gathered that most military units battling the insurgents are also contending with obsolete equipment, as the men in uniform have no communications equipment other than mobile phones. Reports indicated that some of the Armoured Personnel Carriers, fighter jets and the helicopter gunships that were being used in the ongoing fight against the insurgents were acquired between 1979 and 1982. Air Marshal Adesola Amosu, the Chief of Air Staff, confirmed this in a press briefing he held to herald the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Nigerian Air Force two months ago. He told journalists that some of the equipment in the arsenal of the Air Force are as old as the Service. “The challenge the Nigerian Air Force is facing today as we clock 50 is obvious. We have been on for 50 years; some of the platforms that we have are as old as the Nigerian Air Force. Even when funds are made available, dodgy procurement processes have ensured that high-end equipment that may have little value, but are veritable avenue by contractors to skim off government money, are purchased.” “On paper, it (Nigeria) maintains the broadest spectrum of capabilities in the region, but in reality much of its equipment is unfit to be deployed for prolonged periods of time,” the International Institute of Strategic Studies said in its annual review, The Military Balance – 2014. This, coupled with operational blunders from the top, has led to frustration and ,low morale among the troops, as shown by the recent attack on the General Officer Commanding 7 Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed, by his soldiers protesting the killing of their colleagues in an ambush by insurgents while returning from an operation. Officials of the Nigeria Ministry of Defence and National Security Adviser last week disassociated themselves from the disbursement of military budgets and award of contracts. But analysts have attributed the failure of the military to rout the insurgents despite the state of emergency imposed on the three North-east states in the past one year to the failure to properly equip and fund the military for the task. A Funding Challenge The situation has led to questions about the adequacy of the funds budgeted for military operations. About three weeks ago, Major General Abdullahi Muraina, the Chief of Account and Budget of the Nigerian Army, stirred the hornets’ nest when he revealed that funding has been the major obstacle to the military’s prosecution of the war against the insurgents. The General, who spoke at the opening of the 2014 Training Week of the Nigerian Army Finance Corps for Warrant Officers/Senior Non-Commissioned Officers at Jaji, Kaduna State, said resources at the military’s disposal were not enough to combat the current security challenges confronting the country. “Currently, budgetary allocation for the military is inadequate to meet the contemporary security challenges and also cater for the welfare of the Nigerian Army. The Nigerian Army is enmeshed in the bureaucratic bottlenecks for the funding approvals for military operations. This calls for a review as the increasing speed at which the effects of conflict appear in the operational environment will continue to challenge commanders.” The military chief consequently advised the government to “evolve other means of funding and supporting military operations other than the normal budgetary allocation. Such means include but are not limited to strategic cooperation and liaison with other civil industries for the production of uniforms and other equipment”. Going into specifics, the Army finance chief noted that the military’s capital budget for 2014 is just N4.8 billion. While trying to prove the inadequacy of the budget, General Muraina noted that: “Now, to provide only one item for the troops engaged in the operation in the North-East. Assuming we committed 20,000 troops, cost of the jacket and the helmet is in the average of $1,000. If you change that to naira it is about N150,000. If you now have about 20,000 troops, this means they are going to spend about $20 million and that is about N3 billion. N3 billion as a percentage of N4.8 billion, which is the capital budget for this year, is more than 50 per cent. And that is just one item. We are not talking about uniforms, we are not talking about boots, we are not talking about structures where they will stay; we are not talking about training.” Then there is also the claim that, as paltry as the military claimed it is, the funds are not released on time due to bureaucratic bottlenecks. The CDS and the service chiefs, according to reports, confronted the Minister of Finance about this about two weeks ago. But at a press conference in Abuja after the signing of the 2014 budget into law, the Minister said government has always prioritised defence spending. In her words: “Defence spending is top in everything. You know that military establishment needs new things to assist in its work and ours will not be different. To be specific, the military has about N968.12bn and we have disbursed N130.7bn between January and April 2014.” Out of the amount, N85.9bn was released for personnel cost while the balance was for overheads and capital expenditure. Investigations reveal that Nigeria is not among the leading countries in Defence spending in Africa, as countries like Egypt, South Africa, Algeria and Kenya have higher military budgets than Nigeria. In his Democracy Day speech last week, President Jonathan ordered the military to launch a full-scale war against Boko Haram. The President said he has tasked the military to do anything possible to ensure that the Boko Haram insurgency becomes history in the shortest possible time. Analysts however insisted that unless the issue of funding of the military, corruption, equipment and morale of the troops are tackled, that order may end up like the endless state of emergency which has so far failed to yield the expected result of reining-in the insurgents.