Former Presidential aspirant and Head Pastor of the Household of
God Church Pastor Chris Okotie today May 14th posted an
article he wrote on the missing Chibok Girls, state of the nation and
the international help Nigeria is receiving in the fight against Boko
Haram, on his Facebook page.
In the interesting piece, Rev Okotie said Nigeria should not accept help
from Israel to avoid Islamizing the terror war because of Israel's long
drawn conflict with the Arab nations with whom our predominantly
northern brothers share a common faith. See the article below
What makes Boko Haram’s case puzzling is that the group targets its own
people, and especially weak demographic groups like women and children
that are normally spared, along with civilian populations, in
conventional warfare. Although, terrorists hardly respect this
convention, even groups like Al-Qaeda do not attack their own people,
expect where they establish a case of betrayal by fifth columnists
within their ranks.
The unbelievable cruelty of the Boko Haram insurgents as evidenced by
the recent abduction of more than 200 girls in a school hostel in
Chibok, Bornu State ordinarily would have shocked the sponsors of the
Islamists, if they have human hearts in their chests. Nothing suggests
that they do, otherwise, they’d have called the fighters they unleashed
on this nation to order.
At the time of writing the United States, Britain, France and China had
pledged support for Nigeria’s efforts to help track Boko Harm and
rescue these defenseless girls. This has given hope to Nigerians that,
at last, a greater, more realistic action is in the offing.
It may be too late for the falcons to hear the falconer. If you ride
the back of the tiger to power, it would devour you if it has nothing
more to eat. That is the case of Boko Haram. Those who use the hoodlums
to rig themselves to power abandoned them when they finally left power.
Then, the thugs, abandoned to their own devices were hijacked by
politicians of diverse tendencies, and pseudo-Islamic militants, who use
the renal youths to pursue dubious objectives. As disparate criminal
elements infiltrated the group, it became amorphous, leaderless and
difficult to control.
The killing of the original leader of Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf
allegedly in police custody provoked the initial reprisal attacks
against the police. Gradually, other targets were being hit. As the sect
made headlines it attracted jihadist partners from neighbouring
countries like Chad, Niger, Sudan and Mali. Arms from the failing state
of Libya after the death of Col. Maummar Ghadaffi fell into the hands of
these mercenaries, who have strengthened Boko Haram, to the extent that
members of the terror group are now strong enough to frustrate our
army.
That is why arms and ammunitions captured by Nigerian security forces
from Boko Haram fighters appear to be more sophisticated than those our
soldiers use against them. We must understand the forces we are dealing
with before we could defeat them.
It is doubtful if the terrorists have a well structured command and
control system like Al-Shabab of Somalia or Al-Qaeda – in the – Islamic
Maghreb, which almost over-ran the Malian government, before they were
stopped by an African intervention force led by French troops.
If we must destroy Boko Haram, we need foreign help in the shape of
highly sophisticated intelligence which the aforementioned Western
powers who have experience in combating global terrorism have started
offering. Some of their personnel are already here; but the President
must act with greater decisiveness on this terror war. We need help from
anywhere we can get it except Israel. Israel is out of it to avoid
Islamisizing the terror war because of the former’s long drawn conflict
with the Arab nations, with whom our predominantly northern brothers
share a common faith.
Therefore, we must carefully select our foreign partners in the war
against Boko Haram to avoid introducing international rivalries into it.
President Goodluck Jonathan should summon the political will. With
foreign help we could fish out the sponsors of the terrorists, and
pre-empt the attacks before they are launched. The kidnapping of those
young girls at Chibok has set a world record; it is a monumental
disgrace, it strikes at the soul of our nation.
As it were, Nigeria has been kidnapped. At no time in our checkered
history did we live like this, in perpetual fear of being attacked by
criminal elements who are now on the prowl across the nation. For the
first time, armed groups are laying siege on our military installations;
invading army barracks and police formations, leaving heavy casualties
in their trail. They appear capable of engaging our last line of defense
as hit and run urban gorillas.
Now, after the failure of every trick in our books, we obviously have
no answer to Boko Haram. We thought the terrorists have been dislodged
permanently from Abuja and restricted to just the three North Eastern
States of Bornu, Yobe and Adamawa, until the two recent Nyanya bombings.
Chibok, which capped this brazen assault is a terrifying reality. How a
group could abduct more than 200 girls from their school in an
operation that required huge logistics, without being detected in an
area where a State of Emergency is in force, is amazing. Nobody knows
where they’d strike next, except the terrorists themselves.
This recurrent circle of condemnation after a strike and visits by the
President or top government functionaries to bombed sites has continued
for too long. While this may be a painful imperative for our leaders,
what is lacking is a strategy to seriously decapitate the terrorists to
such a point that their strike capability is completely destroyed.
Effective intelligence could stop the terrorists in their tracks, while a
swift, well organized counter-insurgency operation could annihilate
them completely.
So far, we have not succeeded in containing the terrorists because,
either our security forces are ill-equipped, incapable for some reasons,
or are over-stretched to police the vast area they are supposed to
cover. The Chibok tragedy and the frequent attacks on soft targets like
motor parks, worship centres, markets and academic institutions ought to
be prevented by the military authorities, because we all know that is
the stock-in-trade of Boko Haram. Nobody should claim ignorance of the
history of these attacks on such targets.
Boko Haram is a special problem in our country, and we require a
special arrangement to move ahead of their logistics to nip them in the
bud. Aside international assistance as earlier mentioned, localized
knowledge of the terrains is an important factor. We have enough
Para-military forces, which could be deployed to compliment efforts by
our armed services, to provide adequate security coverage for our
nation. There’s nothing wrong if we incorporate our ethnic militias and
vigilante groups in this security arrangement because the nation is at
war. And anyone, except the terrorists, could be a victim. When a nation
is kidnapped, no effort should be spared to rescue it. So that’s why I
join the rest of the world in saying: Bring Back Our Girls Now!
Rev. Okotie, a Presidential Aspirant, wrote from Lagos.