That
the Nigerian government would broach the idea of negotiating with
members of the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad otherwise
known as Boko Haram, is too bitter a pill for many Nigerians to swallow.
And understandably so given the havoc that this terrorist group has
wreaked on the country and its psyche in the past couple of years.
In
2014 alone, the group was believed to have killed more than 10,000
Nigerians in addition to maiming thousands more and destroying property
worth billions of naira. So, Nigerians are justifiably angry with the
sect and would want the military to battle it until the last man is sent
to rot in hell.
Unfortunately, like a dying
patient whose only chance for survival is hinged on the ingestion of
some irritating concoction, Nigeria currently has little or no option
than to negotiate with the deadly sect. In fact, prospects for
negotiations seem to be the most inspirational suggestion from the
six-week old government of President Muhammmadu Buhari.
I
understand the sentiment of Nigerians who are angry at the suggestion
but then, nations endure when they face their realities rather than
wallow in emotional aspirations that their situations do not support.
How
exactly does Nigeria hope to defeat these insurgents militarily? True,
some months back, multinational forces put together by Cameroon, Niger,
Benin and Nigeria ravaged the camps of the insurgents like a vengeful
plague.
Daily, we saw videos of recaptured territories and a
jubilant army celebrating their exploits. These victories, we
understand, were due to the re-equipment of the Nigerian Armed Forces
which invariably shored up the morale of our men and officers. To yours
truly, and I imagine, to a lot of other Nigerians, the routing of the
insurgents in the weeks preceding the general elections was indicative
of the end of the insurgency. But we were mistaken.
In the past
six weeks or so, not less than 500 lives would have been lost to attacks
by Boko Haram insurgents or those who exercise their franchise. In
these weeks, the North-East, which has borne the brunt of the warfare,
the North-West and the North-Central have been shaken by deadly attacks
with signatures identical with that of Boko Haram.
The
implication of this is that the military campaign between February and
March this year has only succeeded in containing the insurgency to an
extent but even that extent remains costly for the country unless
something more positively drastic is done. And for a number of manifest
reasons, which I will enumerate, I do not think those solutions could be
military.
The first is that by the nature of insurgencies,
military confrontations are never the ultimate solution. This fact is
corroborated by examples from all over the world. Like we have in
Nigeria, most insurgencies are trigged by socio-political disaffections.
And as Jonathan Powell, the British diplomat who served as chief
British negotiator on Northern Ireland argues, in a paper entitled,
Security is not enough: Ten lessons for conflict resolution from
Northern Ireland,” if there is a political problem at the root of a
conflict, there has to be a political solution to it. Powell quotes Hugh
Orde, a former Chief Constable of Northern Ireland, as saying that
“there are no examples anywhere in the world of terrorist problems being
policed out.” There must, at some point, be some political solution as
is evidenced in the Northern Ireland “Troubles” which was effectively on
for about four decades before settlement was reached.
Of
course, Powell and Orde do not suggest that security measures have no
place in dealing with insurgencies as they argue that without “security
pressure, insurgents will find life comfortable and have no incentive to
make the tough decisions necessary for peace.” But the point remains
that “security pressure by itself without offering a political way out
will simply cause the insurgents to fight to the last man.”
I
daresay that this is the situation that Nigeria currently faces. With an
army of demoralised soldiers, a lot of whose motivation in the army, by
the admission of the army chief is more pecuniary than militaristic, we
cannot bank on terminating this insurgency on the war front.
The
chance is worsened by the archaic state of our security architecture,
infrastructure and intelligence gathering. How does a nation that relies
on other nations, regardless of their own situation, hope to win this
kind of war?
But more than this, Nigeria’s ability to win this
war through the guns is hampered by its guerilla nature. The size of
Sambisa Forest, one of the strongholds of these insurgents, which
spreads across Borno, Yobe, Gombe, Bauchi states makes it difficult to
go all the way as civilian causalities will definitely be incurred. This
is worsened by our pathetically porous and policed borders which allow
aliens come wreak havoc on the country at will.
The level of
poverty in the country also makes the potential for Boko Haram
recruitments very easy. This is coupled with the deceptive religious
toga which the insurgents have given to their war. A situation in which a
10-year-old girl gets nominated by her father to undertake a suicide
mission tells the extent of local collaboration which Boko Haram could
get as a result of the sale of lies whose potency is encouraged by the
level of illiteracy and ignorance in the northern part of Nigeria.
Most
fatal to the chance of a military victory for Nigeria is the
relentlessness of the insurgents. It is a venture at which perpetrators
never stops reinventing and innovating. At the start, Boko Haram
attacked soft targets, visiting schools and worship places; over the
years, it acquired a territorial status to the extent that more than 30
local governments in the North were under its control with its flag
hoisted.
But with the military incursions of the armed forces in
the first few months of this year, Boko Haram has gone back to its
initial strategy of attacking soft targets, mingling with people in
worship places, restaurants and drinking joints and detonating
explosives with massive casualties following. How does a nation, which
cannot boast of high grade intelligence gathering, win such
confrontations on the war front? How do we deal with situations in which
bombers disguise as worshippers, only to unleash explosives on innocent
worshippers?
This is why the Federal Government must go ahead
and do everything within its capacity to resolve the Boko Haram
challenge. If we think about it, the risk involved in allowing the reign
of violence to continue is enormous for the future of the country.
For
instance, Northern Nigeria currently bears the burden of having the
highest number of out-of-school children in the world. This is
inadvertently preparing another generation of terrorists. And the
greatest harm that we can do to the future of Nigeria is to allow these
insurgents hand over to another generation which is likely to be more
vociferous in their hatred for the nation than the current generation,
in the same way in which the present Boko Haram leaders are more violent
and deviant than Yusuf Mohammed who founded the group. This government
must work hard to dismantle the pyramid of violence that insurgent
groups have mounted in the country.
- @niranadedokun
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