New Telegraph 
‘Boko Haram technically defeated’
Lai Mohammed, former Minister of Information and Culture in 2015 Some 11 years after these words were said by erstwhile Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the same ‘technically defeated’ non-state actors are still giving the state a bloody nose with their repeated nefarious actions.
When he said those words, many people were left utterly flabbergasted because these same violent armed groups were still carrying out attacks on innocent civilians and government security operatives as he made the statement.
Rather than admit that he had seriously erred, and in the typical fashion of our leaders, he doubled down on his statement, which clearly flew against the reality on ground where hundreds, if not thousands of his fellow Nigerians, were on the receiving end of these bandits, in 2019.
This was such that during his visits to various media houses, he insisted that he stood by those words.
However, it is not all together the fault of the minister as it was clear that what he said was not seen as an anomaly by the powers that be that appointed him in the first instance by not sanctioning him.
Instead, a few months later, precisely on December 24, 2015, none other than his principal, President Muhammadu Buhari, told the BBC that Nigeria has “technically won the war” against Islamist Boko Haram militants.
He said that the militant group could no longer mount “conventional attacks” against security forces or population centres.
And sadly, this has been the trend with those in government refusing to be held accountable for their failings! This is why despite his frequent admonitions that the military had successfully degraded the actions of non-state actors, former Chief of Army Staff, General Tukur Buratai remained one of the longest occupants of the exalted position.
It was during his watch that hundreds of Shia Muslims, who were attending a religious ceremony, were brutally killed in Kaduna State on December 12, 2016 for obstructing the convoy of the then Lieutenant General.
A public inquiry on the incident later accused the Nigerian army of killing 347 Shia Muslims and dumping them in a mass grave.
The commission, set up by the Kaduna State Government, said those responsible for the killings should be prosecuted, confirming the conclusions of an earlier Amnesty International report.
“The Commission, therefore, recommends that steps should immediately be taken to identify the members of the Nigerian Army (NA) who participated in the killings … with a view to prosecuting them,” it said.
Of course, no one was ever held accountable and instead, cleric Ibrahim el-Zakzaky, who lost an eye and was left partly paralysed in the violence, and his wife, were detained after being blamed for engineering the face-off between the army and the religious sect.
The military maintained that its soldiers acted according to the rules of engagement after the crowd attempted to assassinate Buratai. But should we be surprised?
Because 49 years ago, late Afrobeat king, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who last week became the first African to be given a Grammys Lifetime Achievement Award, was also on the receiving end when hundreds of soldiers raided his then Kalakuta Republic, brutalised him and his late mother amongst others before burning the house down.
No one was ever brought to book even with the commission of inquiry set up to look into the incident concluding that the act was carried out by ‘unknown soldiers’!
This trend of buck passing has continued till today, which is why when reputable international news agencies, including the BBC, Reuters and AFP, broke the news of a mass adduction of worshippers from a number of churches in Kaduna (which incidentally New Telegraph was one of the few local newspapers to report it) senior government officials tried to throw us under the bus by immediately dismissing the report as false.
It was only after irrefutable evidence were presented, including those by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which said 177 of its members had been abducted, that the government made a volte face and admitted the kidnappings had taken place.
Till date, we haven’t heard that anyone has been reprimanded for pushing out the blatantly false narrative. By the way, before last month’s Kurmin Wali Village raid, the nation had been thrown into turmoil after hundreds of students and teachers were kidnapped from schools in Niger and Nasarawa states to further torpedo the ‘technically defeated’ narrative.
In November, more than 300 students and teachers were seized from a Catholic school in Niger State’ while 25 girls were abducted from the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School in Kebbi State’s Maga town during which the Vice Principle and a security man were killed.
These were among a spate of kidnappings and killings that made international headlines and prompted President Bola Tinubu to suspend his trip to South Africa and Angola. Incidentally, on November 26 last year, worried by the deteriorating security situation across the country, the President declared a nationwide security emergency and ordered the army and police to recruit thousands of additional personnel to tackle worsening armed violence across the country.
Tinubu said the police would hire 20,000 more personnel, raising their strength to 50,000, and authorised the use of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) camps as training facilities.
He also directed the withdrawal of officers from VIP guard duties for redeployment to conflict zones after crash retraining.
The President gave the Department of State Services (DSS) approval to deploy trained forest guards and recruit more staff to flush out armed groups hiding in forests.
“There will be no more hiding places for agents of evil,” Tinubu said in a televised address. The announcement followed recent attacks in Kebbi, Borno, Zamfara, Niger, Yobe and Kwara states, where dozens of civilians were killed and kidnapped.
Sadly, despite this declaration, the nefarious activities of these non-state actors have continued virtually unabated and sadly taken the lives of senior military officers including Brigadier-General Musa Uba.
And during the week, more than 200 people lost their lives in Kwara, Katsina and Benue states due to the activities of these terrorists!
In other countries people are held accountable for their failings as has been the case in South Sudan where President Salva Kiir recently sacked two senior aides following an embarrassing situation where he appointed a dead man to serve on a panel to lead discussions on elections scheduled for December; while in South Korea, the wife of the nation’s ousted former president was sentenced to 20 months in jail for accepting bribes from the controversial Unification Church.
Such things will never happen here – the world’s most populous black nation– which is why our officials can literally get away with unbridled stealing and other vices without facing any repercussions.
Unfortunately, the continued assault on the nation by non-state actors and our seeming inability to checkmate them brings to mind the statement by Albert Einstein who said:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!” By now, it should be clear to our political leaders and those running the nation’s security architecture that they need to try something radically different – perhaps that will finally ensure that the non-state actors are truly ‘technically defeated’!
