Yola – A year ago, a dozen Nigerian troops
fighting about 200 Boko Haram militants in the
town of Chibok exhausted their ammunition and
ran, leaving the road open for the abduction of
nearly 300 girls.
Today, Nigerian soldiers are rescuing hundreds of
kidnapped girls and women from the last forest
stronghold of the Islamic insurgents.
The reason for the unimaginably swift shift in
fortunes?
In the last three months, military forces from
neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon have
joined the battle. In addition, Nigerian troops are
finally receiving better arms and weapons, as well
as hazard pay that they had not received until
this year.
As a result, Boko Haram’s supply lines are being
cut off, creating conditions for the security forces
to deliver a potential knockout blow to the
extremists who have created havoc in
northeastern Nigeria for years.
Transport fuel and ammunition
Nigeria’s military has announced that it has
recaptured all major towns seized by the
insurgents and that Boko Haram’s main fighting
force is hemmed into the Sambisa Forest, where
it is being pounded by air raids and attack
helicopters. While the government forces are
stronger, Boko Haram is growing weaker by the
day.
Women rescued in recent days from forest camps
said that now it is the insurgents who are
running out of ammunition, along with food and
fuel. That could explain why — when the captives
refused to follow fleeing Boko Haram members
last week — the militants did not shoot them.
Instead, they stoned the girls and women, killing
several of them.
Last year, Boko Haram fighters were able to
escape across Nigeria’s borders to evade capture.
Now, they are blocked by the troops from Chad,
Niger and Cameroon. With Nigeria’s permission,
Chad and Niger have even sent their forces inside
Nigeria to pursue the extremists.
Routes used by Boko Haram to transport fuel and
ammunition have been reclaimed by the military.
On Sunday, military intelligence officers arrested a
man who allegedly supplied fuel and food to Boko
Haram, reported Defence Ministry spokesperson
Major General Chris Olukolade.
Last year’s toll of people killed by Boko Haram
was estimated at 10 000 — more than in all the
previous four years of the insurgency combined.
The group carried out cross-border attacks with
impunity, seized a swath of northeastern Nigeria
the size of Belgium and created a wave of 1.5
million refugees fleeing the self-declared Islamic
caliphate.
Suicide bombers
President Goodluck Jonathan did not take a
strong stand until this year — too late to save
him from losing re-election in March as disgusted
voters in Africa’s biggest democracy opted
instead for Muhammadu Buhari, a former military
dictator.
Jonathan also was slow to act when the group
last year abducted the more than 200 schoolgirls
in Chibok — initially denying it had even happened
and losing precious weeks in the mass kidnapping
that sparked worldwide outrage and a campaign
for their freedom under the hashtag of #
BringBackOurGirls. It is still unclear if any of the
Chibok girls are among the 700 freed from Boko
Haram in the past week.
Buhari had crushed another Islamic uprising in
the 1980s, and he has vowed “to rid this nation
of terror” after he becomes president on May 29.
A retired major general, he describes himself as a
convert to democracy, and showed it by taking
power through the ballot box.
In the war zone, self-defense civilian groups
patrol markets with homemade weapons, looking
out for suicide bombers — but also for strangers
buying large amounts of food, indicating they
could be Boko Haram members or suppliers.
While the group still has the ability to carry out
bombings and isolated attacks, it would be
difficult for it to surpass last year’s carnage.
Nigeria and its African partners say they want to
eradicate Boko Haram. A more realistic goal may
be to reduce it to what it used to be: a terror
group with no control over territory — still able to
launch attacks but not on as large a scale as
before.
Soldiers on the battlefront around the hills and
caves of Gwoza, which Boko Haram had declared
the capital of its caliphate, told The Associated
Press this week that many improvements have
led to the turnaround against the insurgents.
Among them:
Troops this year began receiving the daily hazard
pay of 15 000 naira ($75) for the first time.
— Some battle-weary troops who had been on the
front lines for two years recently have been
allowed to stand down.
— The forces have received new weapons and
ammunition. Previously, there were reports that
troops going into battle had only 30 rounds of
ammunition each, with corrupt commanders
diverting resources into their own pockets.
Government information
Since democracy was restored in Nigeria in 1999,
civilian governments have deliberately kept the
armed forces weak to ensure that soldiers could
not mount any more of the coups that kept the
West African nation subjected to military
dictatorships for decades. Boko Haram has forced
a change in that strategy.
Africa’s biggest oil producer has bought
helicopters, drones, armored personnel carriers,
tanks, rocket launchers and other armaments.
This includes helicopter gunships that are being
used in the Sambisa Forest to scatter the
militants and drive them away from their
captives, according to video released Monday by
PR Nigeria, an agency that disseminates
government information.
“What we never had, we now have,” the
government spokesman on the insurgency, Mike
Omeri, told the AP in a recent interview. “We have
drones, we have aircraft, we have APCs, and so
on, and we are getting to where we should be to
rebuild the armed forces, returning it to its glory.”
Buhari will be tested on whether he can revive the
economy in the northeast, which has been
decimated by the uprising. Hundreds of
thousands of farmers have been driven from their
lands, some of the biggest cattle markets on the
continent no longer exist and many investors
have abandoned the region. Rebuilding the
hundreds of thousands of structures razed by
Boko Haram will cost many millions of dollars.
The stakes are high for landlocked Chad as well,
since many of its trading routes have been closed
by the insurgency.
Economic strife has been one of the root causes
for the rise of Boko Haram, which has exploited
the feelings of exclusion among the unemployed
and disaffected men in predominantly Muslim
northern Nigeria.
Buhari also has promised to address corruption,
another reason for the group’s growth. Corruption
sapped the military of its strength and has
deprived front-line troops of weapons and
vehicles. Unless Buhari can root it out, it will
affect the military’s capability to prevent the rise
of another group like Boko Haram.
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