Saturday, January 25, 2025 - The Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has explained why the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist groups has lasted for so long.
The group began sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets,
but progressed in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the
United Nations office in Abuja.
The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning
of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of
Nigeria.
Apart from the killing of tens of thousands of innocent citizens in the
region, about 2.3 million people have been displaced by the conflict since May
2013.
Appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday,
the Chief of Defence Staff highlighted issues that might have led to the
military’s prolonged battle with the insurgents.
“This Boko Haram thing is a lot. Then I tell you this, for them to have
survived for 16 years and are still fighting, how are they getting their
funding? Who’s sustaining them? Because they cannot just be doing it actively
just like that.
“What I tell people is- no country should allow this kind of thing to
commence. It is a difficult operation to eradicate, extremely difficult.
“Because before now, when we had the conventional kind of warfare, you
are fighting a country. You know you’re fighting for territory. You want to
achieve something.
“Now you are fighting with people that have nothing to lose. It is an
ideology they have in their minds. They believe they are right and you are
wrong. He believes if he kills you, he’s getting a blessing. If you kill him,
he’s going to heaven. That’s absolutely nothing to lose.
“That makes it very, very difficult, and it’s not written on their
foreheads. So, how do you identify who is who?
“And they’ve realized that we obey international laws, they don’t. So
what do they do? They use human shields. Anytime they have anything, they go
with people, so that you cannot attack them, you cannot shoot, and that’s what
makes it so.
“When people say, why is it taking so long? It is a very, very difficult
operation to do, because you make the mistake, you kill some people, and your
country comes after you. If you don’t kill them [the terrorists], and they
continue striving. So, in both ways, you are at the receiving end.
“Because you are wearing a uniform, you can be identified. You are, by
law, constitutionally held down on certain things that you must obey. So those
are the issues we are facing.
“You know, like I told you, if it was
conventional warfare with the equipment, armaments we have now, we’ll go to a
community and flatten the entire community where they live. We’ll end this in
the very short term, but you can’t do that anymore.”
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