by Nnamdi Anekwe-Chive

 

In criticizing the Nigerian military’s war efforts in the North East, we often fail to understand the historical context within which they are performing the current task, we choose to disregard the decades of sheer neglect of future military planning…

Robert Gates is one American that had the privilege of serving 8 US presidents, as national security staff at various times, deputy director of the CIA, CIA director, and a defense secretary under presidents Bush and Obama. In his memoir “DUTY”, he complained bitterly about the US defense department, fixated on future conventional wars, without considering the non conventional wars such as the counter insurgency they were waging in Iraq and Afghanistan. He opined that, the military leaders at the pentagon were not planning enough and deploying the right military hardware suitable to the operations, including the need to protect the troops adequately following heavy American casualties.

My key take away from Gate’s observation is on planning for the future and current military conflicts. It leads one to wonder whether Nigeria has such a structure where civilian leadership interrogates the military leadership on the future and current military exigencies, in terms of wars, joint trainings and equipment.

In criticizing the Nigerian military’s war efforts in the North East, we often fail to understand the historical context within which they are performing the current task, we choose to disregard the decades of sheer neglect of future military planning, joint military trainings for fear they may be used as avenue to plan coups, and ignored the paltry sums that were allocated to defence procurements.

Even lessons of past military interventions in Sierra Leone and Liberia were never learned. We often trumpet the military successes in those wars, but failed to realize the Nigerian military faced same current challenges then, because at a point in the battle for Monrovia, Gen. Malu had to fly to Abuja to complain he needed VBLs (infantry fighting vehicles) or the fact that the Nigerian troops in Sierra Leone had no assault helicopters for military advances until British special forces landed with the capability to win the war.

The current military offensive against the Boko Haram terrorists has been interpreted as political, aimed to improve the electoral fortunes of the ruling party, but that is not the true position,

I will make an attempt, to analyze the phases of Boko Haram terrorist group’s rebellion against the Nigerian state beginning from 2011, after they were dispersed in 2009 by the security services, which culminated in the death of the pioneer leader, Mohammed Yusuf, and also efforts made by the military and security forces to contain the threat.

2010 was the year of regrouping under Abu Shekau, with raids on police stations, prisons, and setting off bomb explosions. They graduated to another level with the first suicide bombing in Nigeria which happened at police force headquarters, Abuja, on 16^th June, 2011. That singular attack were followed by other suicide and bomb attacks across the north east, especially places of worship, police stations and with a signature suicide attack on the United Nations headquarters.

How did Nigerian military and security services respond to this phase (July 2011- December 2012)?

National Security Adviser, General Owoeye Azazi (rtd) whose office was saddled with the task of coordinating anti-terror operations against the terrorists, by virtue of Terrorism Prevention Act 2011, set out to establish a national security architecture from the scratch, with the military setting up counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency department, training special forces, and procuring counter terrorism equipment to confront the emerging threat.

They had some level of success with targeting the Boko Haram cells scattered across the north east and north west, closed down dozens of IED factories, arrested some Boko Haram commanders, bomb making specialists, disrupting IEDs planted in many locations, however, the efforts were drops in the ocean, as the terror group embark on widespread bombing campaigns.

It is very instructive to note that, at this phase, the Nigerian military and security services were faced with confronting acts of terrorism, and were pooling all resources to bear on anti-terrorism efforts. It is also important to ask what was the strategic thinking at the ministry of defence, defence headquarters, intelligence and security services offices at this time.

What kind of advice and briefings were they offering the political leadership headed by the President and the National assembly? And were they providing futuristic credible threat analysis to correspond with defence/security procurement request to enable the military/security , plan/fight the future wars?

Going by President Jonathan’s explanation recently that he underestimated the Boko Haram threat, his humble admission should be taken in the light of the above questions and to understand the intelligence/security briefings he was receiving at the time from the highest defence and security leadership in Nigeria. They obviously didn’t think the group would graduate into seizing territories, in order to establish a caliphate. Had they analyzed properly, they would have set out in the day to plan for the on coming war, but they probably never did. The general view is that, they focused their plan and strategy on counter terrorism, and developing resources to counter and degrade the ability of the terror group to commit more acts of terror against the citizens

All these strategies and plans were done against the backdrop of a Nigerian state with no more than hundred thousand soldiers, with various military and internal security operations going on across the country, and not to mention an underwhelmed police force. The north east alone needs nothing less than fifty thousand soldiers for the task, not when you are talking about a Sambisa forest twice the size of Lagos, Balmo forest in Bauchi, hills of Gwoza, Mandara mountains, thousands of kilometres of desert and streams/lake e.t.c, the region presented the military with a complex order of battle.

Was anyone thinking about developing the orbat suitable to the north east, and if anyone was thinking at this period, was time enough to put in place the formations, and were there funds to procure equipment?

————————-

 

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.