A reinvigorated military is essential for national security
Security challenges have been an issue in Nigeria even before our Independence but none has been more challenging than the current insurgency posed by Boko Haram, the radical Islamic sect. Despite the fact that the military claims to be on top of the situation in the North East, unfolding events and the opinion of critics obliterates this claim.
In the past one year, the north-eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa have been under emergency rule. Yet Nigerians have not seen the impact of this emergency rule in those places. The massacre of innocent citizens has continued unabated; there have been reported instances that convoys of 30 to 60 vehicles full of men and materiel travel five to ten kilometres to conduct an operation, killing people and destroying property and returning to their base.
Furthermore, questions have been raised as to how supposedly barely literate insurgents could invade the Nigerian Air Force Base and destroy five military aircrafts in Maiduguri? Why did some soldiers of the 7 Division allegedly fire shots as their General Officer Commanding (GOC) while he was addressing them? And why was the GOC redeployed? Is it true that Nigeria soldiers are under-equipped against Boko Haram? How motivated are our soldiers and military personnel to surmount Boko Baram?
Similarly, there have been reports that soldiers are defecting because of the superior ammunition of Boko Haram. And more recently, with the killings of dozens of Nigerian soldiers by Boko Haram, the wives of men and officers of Giwa Barracks staged a protest rejecting an order that their husbands should be drafted to Gwoza town, where the insurgents’ hold sway.
As if to corroborate how poorly equipped the military is, President Goodluck Jonathan lately requested that the National Assembly urgently approve the borrowing of $1 billion to upgrade the equipment, training and logistic of our armed forces and security services to enable them to more forcefully confront the serious threat of Boko Haram.
That the sect appears to be succeeding in making the nation’s military and intelligence capacities look ordinary is totally unacceptable. The military is a major determinant of other elements of national power; hence, it cannot allow itself to be ridiculed. Agreed, that the rescue of the Chibok girls and other kidnapped persons requires patience because of the need to preserve human lives but the continuous raiding of villages, killings and bombings need to be checked.
However, the military must conduct an in-house search for the purpose of expunging saboteurs, while implementing measures that will boost the morale of the troops deployed to fight the insurgents. The national executive council of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), in a communiqué at the end of a meeting in Kaduna, said “without the support and cooperation from within the military and security circles, the insurgents would not have been succeeding so easily in their dastardly acts.”
We note that this war too serious a matter to be left with the military alone. Neither will it be solved with a $1 billion of sophisticated military assets e.g. helicopters to cover a wide, remote area under the control an enemy that is amorphous and skilled at asymmetric warfare. Nevertheless, equipping and training our soldiers must not be politicized.
In addition, we urge the National Assembly to consider a reform of our military and security apparatus as was done in the US in 1947 when the Joint Chiefs of Staff was set up as an advisory committee to advise the US Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council, the National Security Council and the President of the US.