Boko Haram

By Muhammad Sabiu

President Muhammadu Buhari will on Thursday meet with the security service chiefs.

Femi Adesina, a presidential spokesperson, announced the meeting today in a statement via his Facebook account.

According to Mr Adesina, the meeting, which will be held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, will focus on the recent security achievements across the country.

He said, “The security forces have in the past few weeks taken the battle more robustly to insurgents, bandits, and all other criminals troubling the country, and they are now surrendering in droves.

“The President will be brought up to speed on developments at the Thursday meeting, while plans to bring a decisive end to the challenges will be formulated.”

Recall that recently Boko Haram/ISWAP fighters in their hundreds have surrendered to the Nigerian troops in the northeastern part of the country, thereby marking a tremendous development in the fight against insecurity in Nigeria.

This is coming a few days after the president returned from the United Kingdom, where he spent 18 days during which he attended an education summit and had some check-ups.

By Bilyaminu Abdulmumin

Perspective is what makes any matter arising be two way. Hiding behind this aegis, everyone will prefer to go with the view that suits them. This is similar to what I learned from a Nigerian saying, mind the message, not the messenger. Those who the message favours would go with it; otherwise, they would instead focus on the messenger.

Similar to this phenomenon in court proceedings is the aspects of either substance to the case or technicalities. So, all evidence would be presented in a case; you will think that’s the end for the accused, only for him to turn around and rely on technicalities. 

Before the historic 2015 general election, the then ruling party, PDP, sought to cling to General Muhammadu Buhari’s WAEC certificate. The attempt was to take on the person of Buhari instead of what he stood for, but it failed. I doubt he had written the exam, but he possibly rode on the back of official consent to progress. So the allegations could be valid, just like the claims he stood for. It depends on what favours who.

However, the Tsunami of change at the time was too strong to allow taking on the Buhari’s past. This is the kind of force required to douse the rising dust against Dr Ali Isa Pantami, the Communication and Digital Economy minister.

There are emerging signs of commitments from the Minister Pantami to revamp the sector. It is easy to understand how this will go a long way to better the nation’s insecurity.

The abuse of SIM cards in Nigeria has been very rampant, lamented by many. Bandits increasingly go on rampage, kidnapping and negotiating for ransoms undetected. Getting the SIM in Nigeria is as easy as anything effortless. Therefore, heinous activities by the underworld men continue in perpetuity. So the Minister wants to bring sanity to the ministry.

For auditing purposes, a directive was issued to halt the sale, activation, and registration of new SIM cards on December 9, 2020. Without reference to any conspiracy theories, those who are not happy with the development instead chose to descend on the Minister’s previous affiliations and sympathies. The views that the Minister reportedly renounced.

In a desperate attempt to propagate this interest, to say the least, one news media ended up undoing itself by displaying timid journalism prowess in its inability to differentiate truth from myth. 

This media published the famous video of fierce debate between Dr Pantami and Muhammad Yusuf, using it as evidence for the latter’s terrorism tendency. If there is any evidence that could absolve Pantami from what they claim, it is that debate, not what the Pantami distractors want us to understand. However, we can still learn a lesson from the development.

Dr Pantami, a rare gem in the north, an authority on both Islamic and secular education, would display the human sign (weakness) by renouncing the views he held earlier in his life. It is an excellent reason to keep on any idea between iron fist and kid-glove; it is religiously and politically wise. A similar issue is currently hunting Governor Nasir El-Rufa’i.

A video recently shared by 21st-century chronicles El-Rufa’i taking full advantage of insecurity during the Jonathan administration to score points for himself and his party.  El-Rufa’i criticised everything about insecurity in the video that he is not doing today. No regard to the reasons he gave as to why he has changed his decision.

The current standoff between Pantami and his distractors is an attempt to look beyond the effort being made in the country’s communication sector. But as for those calling for secured Nigeria, let the audit for SIM subscribers and vision for the country’s database (linking the NIM and upcoming BVN) continues.

Bilyamin Abdulmumin is a Chemical engineering PhD student at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He can be reached via bilal4riid13@gmail.com.

By Muhammad Sabiu

Reports have indicated that about 605 repentant Boko Haram members have laid down their arms and surrendered to the Nigerian military in recent weeks.

According to PRNigeria, a top intelligence officer in the know of the issue said that the exercise for the repentant terrorists and their families conforms with the “international laws and best practices, relating to enemies willing to surrender.”

The senior officer said that some of the repentant terrorists were afraid they could be eliminated if they “surrendered but were persuaded by their spouses and parents.”

“Surprisingly, their parents and wives gave them encouragement that they would stand by them if they surrender to troops.

“The intelligence efforts are invisible but manifesting in current outcomes. The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Faruk Yahaya, encourages a mixed technique of kinetic and non-kinetic operations that are humane in nature as he instructed that while we accept those willing to surrender, we should not spare the stubborn one by sending them to where they belong.

“The sustained and well-coordinated military operation has exerted pressure on the terrorists who have deserted their various hideouts and camps, while their members who felt being misled are surrendering with their families to the Nigerian troops.

“During profiling, some of the Commanders who surrendered to troops admitted that their various enclaves are bedevilled by hunger, disease, and the perpetual fear of military offensives.

“The media are key to shaping the troops’ resolve to continue their aggressive posture, while the citizens maintain their confidence on the military efforts on Counter-Terrorism,” the officer said.

The Boko Haram insurgency has led to the killing of thousands of people and the displacement of many in the northeastern part of Nigeria.

By Tajuddeen Ahmad Tijjani

Various reports revealed that US senators are planning to halt the agreed sales of warplanes to the Federal Republic of Nigeria on human rights concerns. This unpopular decision leaves many Nigerians in awe, wondering why would the so-called peace-loving United States do that to a nation bedevilled by security challenges, ranging from violent secessionists, killer herdsmen, banditry, kidnapping and Boko Haram — an insurgency that consumes more than 36,000 lives from 2009 to date. 

The number one enemy of Nigeria is insecurity, as the country’s security agencies are having difficulty in surmounting the problem over the years. No doubt, the government of the federation is trying everything humanly possible to end the ugly trend. However, the challenge continues to prove insurmountable, mainly due to the lack of state-of-art weaponry in the country’s arsenal. Understanding this particular shortcoming forces the Buhari administration to shop for sophisticated armouries from the United States of America – a perceived important ally of the Nigerian state. Unfortunately, the bilateral relationship that exists for decades between the US and Nigeria that is expected to play a significant role in facilitating the arms deals and intelligence sharing has been disregarded by these US senators.

Suffice to say; this is not the first time the US turns down Nigeria’s demand for war gadgets on the purported account of human rights records. Denying Nigeria’s request during the Jonathan administration was undoubtedly one of the significant factors that made Nigerian forces deficient in combating Boko Haram, hence leaving the insurgency to prevail then. Now we are faced with many other terrorist acts; we cannot afford to experience the repetition of what happened before. Therefore, to accomplish this task of securing the territorial integrity of our nation, we must think outside the box and source alternatives to acquire sophisticated war gadgets that would help us eliminate terrorists and terrorism in the African most populace nation.

Ostensibly, America is not helping matters in our war against insurgency. No good ally would deny Nigeria a purchase of weapons at this challenging moment of turmoil. As a matter of urgency, the federal government should leave America and shop for the needed warplanes elsewhere. We can try the likes of Russia, China, Japan, South Korea or Germany to have expeditious delivery and usage because they are best with sophisticated ware fare all over the world.  

It’s high time for Nigeria and Africa to realise that some Western countries are not interested or concerned about our peaceful coexistence. It’s, therefore, significant to give priority to research and development to find ways to save ourselves from such last hour denials. Relying on the US to help us address the multiple security challenges in Nigeria and Africa is becoming suicidal. We must find some better allies that would be ever willing to help us out of any predicament unconditionally.

Tajuddeen Ahmad Tijjani writes from Galadima Mahmud Street K/Kaji Azare, Bauchi State.

By Muhammad Sabiu

The Nigerian army has on Thursday refuted media reports alleging that about 1000 repentant Boko Haram members were secretly released and handed over to the Borno State Government.

This was contained in a statement released by the Director Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Onyema Nwachukwu, through Nigerian Army’s official Facebook handle.

The statement reads, “The Nigerian Army (NA) has been notified of a media publication alleging that the NA has handed over 1009 Ex-Boko Haram fighters to Borno State government. The report also alleged that the event was shrouded in secrecy.”

The Army added that “this report, is obviously one of those attempts to dampen troops morale and denigrate the NA, riding on the back of unsubstantiated report and misinformation.”

In an attempt to make a clarification, it further recounted what actually transpired. “It is an indisputable fact that the ongoing Counter Terrorism Counter Insurgency Operations (CTCOIN) in the North East has led to the arrest of several terrorism/insurgency suspects. These suspects have been held in custody, while undergoing profiling and further investigations by experts from the Joint Investigation Centre (JIC) and those who are found culpable are usually handed over to prosecuting agencies accordingly, while those who are not implicated in terrorism and insurgency are cleared and released to the state government for rehabilitation before they are reintegrated into the society. These cleared suspects are therefore not ex Boko Haram fighters, as peddled in the said online report and as the masterminds would want to impress on the public. A total of 1009 cleared suspects, not ex-fighters, were therefore released after this rigorous process on Wednesday 14 July 2021.

It is also necessary to categorically state that the handing over of the cleared suspects was not shrouded in secrecy as it was witnessed by United Nations Humanitarian and government agencies, in tandem with global best practice,” the statement added.

By Salisu Yusuf

Almost 20 years since the September 11 attacks in the U.S. and the subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, the last Friday’s swift vacation of Bagram Airbase by the U.S forces, the situation in Afghanistan gets worst. The country is becoming more divided; social strife grows, and citizens become more disenchanted. Hostilities between the Hazara Shia minority and mainly Pashtun Sunni majority increases. All over the country, people feel less secure in groups and individually as each one is afraid that the rival militia may attack them. The hitherto communal Afghanistan is fast turning individualistic, especially as a result of Talibans’ follies, misrule, the failure of the sectarian/tribal leadership, the role of Ulama and by the Russian occupation in the 70’s and ’80s, as well as the U.S’s so-called war on terror.

I have never seen a religious sect that clings to power and unorthodoxly turns to folly like the Taliban. They have crossed religious, ethical lines. They ask their members to attack hospitals, with women under labour, children receiving natal care, and other defenceless people receiving treatment. In one instance in 2020, they struck a maternity hospital belonging to the international organisation Medicines Sans Frontiers in Kabul. They gruesomely murdered 24 victims, including impoverished women, children, and babies. A week-old baby was among the dead; another two-week-old baby survived though his mother could not. There has not been a worse unnatural disaster!

Moreover, coordinated, reciprocal attacks by both Sunni and Shia militants are on the rise. I have not seen thoughtless sects like the two groups in Afghanistan/Pakistan axis, where each group asks its members to attack the other while performing obligatory prayers in mosques! And when such attacks are carried out, while the victims’ relatives nurse them and mourn other fatalities, the attackers get euphoric as they believe that they have fulfilled a religious duty. Outrageously they think that should if they die in the process, they would directly go to paradise – as if it belongs to their fathers!

 In addition to such senseless attacks, the Taliban has stepped up on a campaign against girl-child education. As a result, hundreds of innocent girls have been killed on their way to schools because, to them, girls’ education is a deviation from the norm. 

In one such horrendous attack, the vocal Malala Yusafzai is lost to the West. The girl was 11 when she’s shot in the head on her way to school. The girl’s crime was pleading to the Taliban to let girls pursue their educational careers. As the saying goes, the rest is history. Malala is now an Oxford University graduate in philosophy, politics and economics. 

Malala is lost to the West with her two young brothers. Pakistanis could only watch her on T.V. addressing the U.N. Assembly, celebrating her birthday, or receiving Nobel Prizes. If she had not been shot, she would have been in Pakistan, and a practising Muslim, whose talent might have been used in teaching and aspiring young girls. Girls like Malala could have been used to heal the growing social division between Sunni and Shia; alas, she’s lost to Europe.

More painful is the list of Nadia Nadim. A more intelligent and talented girl who’s also lost to the West. Nadia’s father was also killed by the Taliban when she’s a child. Under a false identity, the girl fled Afghanistan on a truck at just 11 years. She’s currently living in Denmark, studying reconstructive surgery. Nadia, like Malala, is lost to the West. Her colossal talent would have been more beneficial to Afghanistan because she’s a prospective scientist. Nadia speaks 11 languages. She also plays football for the Danish National Team, scores 200 goals, making her a celebrity.

If Nadia’s father lived, she would have been left to pursue her career, would have been in Afghanistan practising Islam. She could have been a medical doctor, possibly assisting thousands of Afghan women in need of medical care. But, alas, she’s lost to football, playing a celebrity role, her beauty being explored, etc. 

The above are a few lessons to Nigerian youth who sympathise with terrorist groups like Boko Haram. Such groups are in for regression rather than progression.

While the so-called Doha Peace Conference between the Afghan government and Taliban is in progress, the country is hotly on the brink of another civil war. The Taliban is advancing towards Kabul, inciting more antagonism while the country suffers from brain drain; indeed, it’s Talibans’ folly, but Western gains.

Salisu Yusuf teaches at the Department of English, Federal College of Education, Katsina. He can be reached via salisuyusuf111@gmail.com.