Book Haram: Why The Military Deserves Our Support

BRASS TACKS
with Suleiman Uba Gaya
0803 567 6295 (Text message only)

Something amazing happened recently when I was traveling in company of a close friend from Kano to Zaria. The guy is a state chairman of one of the major opposition parties in Nigeria, and the topic of discussion was the insecurity of Nigeria. Curiously, I asked him the question: would he want to see an end to the Boko Haram war that has been ravaging in our land for ten odd years? As most Nigerians would answer, his response was positive.

But I find his response rather very shocking when I asked yet another question: as an opposition element, would he accord the credit to the Buhari administration if the Boko Haram terrorists are totally wiped out? In other words, doesn’t he think winning the war at this point in time could aggregate to a major plus for the Buhari administration that I know he hates with a passion? He answered without any equivocation that rather than have President Buhari score a plus through a total defeat of banditry and insurgency, he will rather have the twin evils continuing to abide with us.

And if one takes a close look at the social media, especially opinions emanating from many political enemies of the government of the day, one finds the tendency on the part of some Nigerians to go on a celebratory mood whenever our troops are attacked or killed. They do this first by making the news of any attack go viral, at times even jerking up the casualty figure to make our military appear weak. For them, the difference between President Buhari and the Nigerian military is that between six and half a dozen. For them, they are one and the same, in as much as he remains the commander-in-chief of the Nigerians armed forces.

But five years ago someone else was the commander-in-chief of these same armed forces. And five years from now – no matter what – someone else is going to be the holder of that post. So it simply means the armed forces do not belong to any individual.

Globally, the military is expected to show absolute allegiance to the country setting them up. And the president of any country is always the face of that sovereignty. That informs why they can be accused of supporting any government of the day. Where they disagree with government, you don’t expect the military to go to the social media or any other market place of ideas to say so. In the days of old, the military simply upstages any government its top echelon disagrees with. That is no longer fashionable, and so, what it does is a constructive engagement. But even at that, civil authorities always have the last say.

So if President Buhari was not the commander of the armed forces five years ago, and less than four years from now someone else is going to take over that responsibility from him, what it definitely means is that the armed forces belong to you and me. It belongs to every Nigerian, irrespective of background. If we destroy our military by politicizing it and urging the troops to rebel against their commanders or the government of the day, what happens if you, the instigator, becomes the next commander-in-chief?

Whereas mediums like the Wall Street Journal would write fantastic stories about an imaginary 1000 troops being accorded a secret burial by the military, the same medium is doing all it can to defend the armed forces of the United States of America, where it is based.

In December last year, something instructive happened in America. President Trump was visiting Iraq secretly, and leaking the news could expose his life to serious danger. And so, the government sought the cooperation of the Wall Street Journal and the American press in general to keep the trip a top secret. None of the newspapers or radio or television houses reported it until after the US President safely returned home. That is, inspite of the fact that President Trump is openly at war with the American Press. He can be rightly described as Enemy Number One to the American Press. If it were here, just in the bid to be the one to BREAK the news, some mediums would have published the story and damn the consequences, knowing they could easily blackmail the government and get its personnel released, even if detained.

There is also this story I always tell, about a sponsored trip I, as the then editor of the daily title of Leadership newspaper, undertook to Turkey in 2012, alongside editors of nine of Nigeria’s biggest newspapers. On a visit to the Journalists and Writers Foundation, which was the preeminent association for all media personnel in that country, the President of the body somewhat accused the Nigerian press of supporting Boko Haram. He explained that he and his colleagues in Turkey were always amazed that in Nigeria, we always accord prominence to dastardly activities of Boko Haram in our newspapers. I personally asked whether anything was wrong with that, and the man explained that terrorists globally thrive in publicity, and by publishing the stories of attacks they carry out, we are inadvertently helping and encouraging them. He cited an example of the PKK terrorists group that was very active in Turkey, saying that whenever the group carries out any attack, they publish the story deep inside their newspapers and only give it a scant mention in radio and television.

It is instructive to point here that in Turkey, too, the government of the day was (and still is) enemy number one to that country’s press. Yet, the President of the country’s journalists was emphatic that when it comes to matters of the military, they (the press men and women) set aside their differences with government and simply support the military.

The reason is simple: the military is the symbol of a nation’s strength, and its members or personnel are staking their lives to make sure you and me continue to operate safely from our comfort zones. Without the sacrifices of our military, the truth or mischief we dish out everyday from the comfort of our offices or homes will not have been possible. If you are in doubt, ask Rwandans during the genocide of the 1990s. There won’t even be the electricity to charge our cellphones, with which we share fake or unsubstantiated news just to spite political enemies and cause disaffection.

Theoretically, every Nigerian will tell you he or she wants banditry and terrorism to end. But hardly does anyone ask what contribution he or she gives towards the realization of that. We seem not to know that by spreading negative news about our military, we are inadvertently encouraging the same terrorists that we accuse the armed forces of not defeating or wiping out. This is because with every negative information shared on the traditional or social media, the enemies are getting emboldened.

At that time you claim that the Nigerian army is operating with weak or obsolete equipment, the armed forces were probably at the verge of totally wiping out a particular territory of the enemy. But by this information that you now make go viral, the enemy will be encouraged to do more to kill the troops or inflict serious damage on them.

Similarly, when you decide to keep the information on terrorists movement or plans to yourself, you are helping the terrorists and weakening our armed forces. Unlike the police, the army will not frame you up when you pass information to its top echelon. The armed forces of other countries that we admire are also not magicians. Their success stem purely from the fact that they get the full support of their compatriots, not only psychologically but more so in passing important information to them.

For example, if the people of Maiduguri were not inadvertently supporting Boko Haram by seeing the terrorists as their own at the very beginning of the insurgency ten years ago, the monster will definitely not have blossomed to what it became. The truth is bitter. But eventually the same boys that the people were supporting started turning their weapons on them. There were Boko Haram boys whose level of indoctrination reached the level where their first victims were their very parents who brought them to this world. Others started by killing their close friends and relations. An adage says when you play with a tiger, you always end in its stomach. Now the people of Borno State no longer support Boko Haram, but it came too little too late.

No matter what, the fact remains that the Nigerian military is our pride as a nation. The soldiers are our sons, brothers, fathers and friends. They are members of the society like you and me. They are humans who make mistakes, and mistakes are meant to be forgiven. The late Nelson Mandela said something to the effect that the weak does not forgive. Only the strong does.

And if your hatred is rooted in political opposition, you need to reflect on what would be your or the nation’s fate when the person you support becomes the commander-in-chief of the armed forces that you are now working so hard to destroy.

In an interview that went viral on the social media two years ago, the foremost opposition figure, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar strongly poured encompass on our military and commended them for their bravery, strongly arguing that they are seriously winning the war against terror. When asked why it is taking so long to totally wipe out the remnants of the insurgents, Atiku gave an example of Colombia, where insurgency festered for fifty years. That was shortly before he fell out with President Buhari. As is typical with us, he is now singing completely a different song. In our desperate quest for political offices, we tend to turn a blind eye to reality and go all out to put a speck on the people’s eyes just to win their votes.

But whether one supports the military or not, the reality is that Nigeria is strongly winning the war against terror. What is happening now is simply a new form of terrorism spearheaded by international forces of ISIS, under the banner of ISWAP.

There has never been any war without casualties. And so, it is not even news worth celebrating when we share or publish the news that so and so number of soldiers have been killed. We should rather be interested in how many terrorists have been killed because that number is always far higher. Even with the best equipment, our military can only succeed with our total support. I wonder what goes through the mind of our soldiers when, in defending us, they put their precious lives on the line and all we have for them are negative narratives.

Undoubtedly, America has the strongest military in the world. But has its armed forces succeed in totally wiping out the Taliban terrorists? You then need to wonder whether it makes any sense to have our people always accusing our military of not wiping out Boko Haram, even when they no longer hold any territory in Nigeria; even when most of their attacks are on soft targets.

Four years ago, for example, Gwoza was one of the headquarters of Boko Haram. They killed the emir of the town and killed lots of people. Now, the current emir is back in town, all courtesy of our military. And Gwoza is beyond the reach of the insurgents. These are the kind of narratives we should be advancing, to support and strengthen our troops.

If your argument is that Boko Haram still attacks military formations, you need to go and find out whether the bases of American armed forces in war zones do not get attacked by terrorists. It is all in their desperate bid to create the impression that they are still very much around.

A veteran journalists who was kidnapped a year ago told me that when he was being released by his captors, they told him that part of the condition was for him to inform the police that they number up to fifty. But he told me that they were only eight in number. It is all in the DNA of criminal elements to create a scary posture of their operations, to psychologically defeat law enforcement agents.

Sadly, we mostly take their bait and help them spread their propaganda free of charge. If we were to quantify in naira and kobo, the value of free propaganda that we have been helping our very enemies, the terrorists, in spreading, there is no doubt it would be in several billions.

This column salutes the officers and men of our armed forces for making it possible for me to pray in my mosque or church without the fear of being attacked. Of course this is not to discountenance the fact that a few of these places of worship are still being targeted, but it has largely been confined to one or two states. Five years ago it was the order of the day to have our churches or mosques attacked every week, and in several states of the federation, including Abuja.

We at times think these attacks cannot reach us. But exactly five years ago, a respected editor and personal friend, Suleiman Bisallah, at that time Managing Editor of The New Telegraph, was killed by a terrorist bomb at Emab Plaza in Wuse 2, Abuja. Before him several other journalists were killed by the same Boko Haram that we are inadvertently helping.

Poverty and hopelessness, of course, are at the heart of the spread of insurgency. Sadly, we have for decades allowed corruption to eat very deeply into the moral fabric of our society. We will help in defeating terror and banditry when we blow the whistle on our corrupt elements, past and present.

God so kind, President Buhari has undertaken to significantly remove millions of Nigerians out of poverty. We all have a duty to support him to do that. Through the Social Investment Programme, government is working hard to reduce the high levels of poverty in Nigeria. We need to sensitize our youths to realize their full potentials by keying into the programme to become very useful to themselves and the society at large.

TO THOSE CALLING FOR WAR…

I saw this sometime in July. It has since been out there on the social space, and many of us might have read it. A conscientious Nigerian sat down to constrict it. Whoever the author might be, he is my writer of the year. I enjoin us all to read it and fully digest the contents. It goes as follows:

In war, everyone is a prisoner of captivity,both the belligerent and the cheerleaders. Keep drumming for war because you feel displaced and dislocated.

In war, the market closes to everyone including you and the one you hate. When the bullet flies around, it hits everyone in destructive staccato.

When bodies filled the ground in debris, we all take in the stench in exhilarating doses.
In war, no one buries the other, we perish in bloated bodies And burst in smelly particles, To be fed by the vultures.

Keep mobilising for showdown, when the doom comes we shall face it in boom of woes.
The call for war can be very sweet, it gives the feeling of conquest, but like the rain, it usually ends with drench.

When the war comes, we all cease to be Igala, Yoruba, Igede, Jukun, Igbo, Angas, Beriberi, Chibok or Fulani.
We all become entrapped bodies of human waste, we will be buried not in tribal identities but as wasted human bodies.

In our carcasses, mutilated by the vultures and left for archaeological fossils,
Shall be us in historical reference. Skeletal heaps are the remains of a people who preferred to perish as fools than to live in dignity…

Belligerently musing.
©Haruspice