> By Emmanuel Onwubiko
>
> A fact that is indisputable is that in terms of demography, the
> youngsters who are in their 40s or less are in the majority
> statistically when a computational headcount of Nigerians are drawn
> up. These huge numbers of contemporary Nigerians who have graduated
> from college and are working in both the private and public sectors
> have not witnessed any war. The first real experience they are having
> is the terrorists attacks by Boko haram terrorists. The war on terror
> has cost this age group a lot because they are mostly the foot
> soldiers executing the war at the war fronts.
>
> So if there is one problem the clear majority of Nigerians would want
> it to disappear over night then it is the consistently well
> coordinated violent attacks on the infrastructures and people of
> Nigeria by the armed Islamists known as Boko Haram terrorists.
>
> The knowledge that the armed terrorists are still pulling strings of
> vicious attacks targeting mostly civilian populations and destroying
> communities and livelihoods of millions of Nigerians in the North East
> of Nigeria is a huge nightmare not just for those who live in that
> expansive landmass but for the rest of Nigeria.
>
> The reason for drawing this conclusion is that the continuous
> deployment of massive numbers of armed soldiers to confront the
> terrorists cost the nation a lot of human and material resources and
> to make it worst this war on terror has gone on for ten Years now and
> it was beginning to appear like a lost cause before the unthinkable
> happened and this scenario that would have far reaching implications
> has been widely reported by international news channels just as the
> action has elicited varying degrees of debates.
>
> This development I chose to classify as unthinkable is so because it
> was simply out of the blues then came the wonderful news to the effect
> that the Chadian army has killed 1,000 fighters during an operation
> against the Boko Haram armed group in the Lake Chad border region. The
> Chadian Army equally gained a lot of media mileage from international
> news organizations going by the fact that the boko haram terrorists
> and other Islamic State’s affiliated terror gangs waging war on
> Nigeria and a few other African nations have managed to enter the
> Guiness book of World’s record as the third deadliest terrorists and
> mass murderers in the global community. It follows therefore that
> developments springing up around the theatre of the war on terror
> would normally be widely reported in the Western media.
>
> It was in that light that the Chadian Army spokesman Colonel Azem
> Bermendoa Agouna told the AFP news agency that 52 troops died during
> the operation, which was launched on March 31.
>
> “A thousand terrorists have been killed, 50 motorised canoes have been
> destroyed,” the colonel said, referring to a large boat also called a
> pirogue.
>
> Agouna said the operation, which was launched after nearly 100
> soldiers were killed in a Boko Haram attack last month, ended on
> Wednesday after the armed fighters were forced out of the country.
>
> The news reporter stated that it is the first official snapshot of the
> outcome of Operation Bohoma Anger, launched after at least 92 soldiers
> were killed on March 23 in the deadliest-ever attack by Boko Haram on
> the country’s military forces. The armed group had mounted a
> seven-hour assault on a Chadian army base at Bohoma.
>
> Reporting from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris
> said: “The country is trying to help other regional powers and
> regional forces under a group called the Multinational Joint Task
> Force (MNJTF) to finally defeat the Boko Haram.”
>
> “A similar operation was conducted five years ago, in 2015, that
> decimated the Boko Haram population. They have regrouped since then,
> and attacked and killed several thousands in the process and regional
> armies in the Lake Chad area have been struggling to deal with the
> problem,” Idris added.
>
> Lake Chad is a vast, marshy body of water where the borders of Niger,
> Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon meet.
>
> There is also a trending topic that the Army of Chad has shouldered
> all the responsibilities of combating the boko haram insurgency. I
> doubted this side of the information but a report actually quoted the
> President of Chad of making that statement which may not represent the
> exact facts and figures behind this war on terror which usually is not
> fought by just one nation going by the obvious facts that the
> terrorists had since expanded their attacks to virtually all West
> African nations neighbouring Nigeria from the Northern flanks. All the
> same we read that the Chadian leader said his nation is doing more
> than its fair share of the war on terror.
>
> “Chad is alone in shouldering all the burden of the war against Boko
> Haram,” President Idriss Deby reported said to the media last weekend.
>
> The same news reporter then asserted that: “It is not clear if this
> will be the end or the beginning of the end of Boko Haram in the
> region.
>
> Many experts the news channel said, believe it is going to be very
> difficult to say that Boko Haram is defeated or will be defeated
> anytime soon because this is an ideology that has taken foothold for
> more than a decade in Nigeria which is spilling into its neighbours”.
> Towards the conclusion of this reflection, we will address this issue
> of whether terrorism can be defeated or not drawing inspiration from
> what some thinker stated about the experiences of the United States of
> America in the fight against terrorism.
>
> As i had stated earlier, I do not believe that Chad is alone in this
> effort to end the reign of terrorism in West AFRICA. This is because
> the same news channel that quoted the President of Chad as saying that
> his nation shoulders the counter terror war effort alone also reported
> that Niger Republic also contributed to the latest rounds of massive
> counter terror battles launched against boko haram terrorists.
>
> The news channel stated that Separately, in Niger, the defence
> ministry in Niamey said its armed forces, in a joint operation with
> Chad, had inflicted “heavy losses” on Boko Haram in the lake region.
>
> “Arms caches, logistical points and several boats were destroyed” and
> islands used as rear bases in the lake’s marshland were “bombarded
> from the air,” it said.
>
> Reportedly, landlocked Niger is facing attacks by armed group on
> opposite ends of the country – fighting that has spilled over from
> neighbouring Mali, and raids in the Lake Chad region by Boko Haram
> fighters.
>
> Boko Haram’s 11-year-old campaign has claimed tens of thousands of
> lives in northeast Nigeria and driven nearly two million people from
> their homes says Aljazeera. This estimate is low.
>
> Interestingly, few days after the Chadian soldiers launched a
> successful military campaign around the Lake Chad area targeting boko
> haram terrorists, the Nigerian Army Chief immediately relocated to the
> North East of Nigeria to personally coordinate what he calls the final
> phase in the war on terror.
>
> Don’t forget that the last time the multinational Joint military
> taskforce attacked boko haram terrorists in 2015, Lieutenant General
> Tukur Yusuf Buratai who is now Nigeria’s Army Chief was the commander
> of that Multinational military taskforce based in Chad. It is
> therefore a little bit of an exaggeration to think that the Chief of
> Army Staff Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai was simply mimicking
> the President of Chad and then claim that this is the reason he has
> relocated to the theatre of war in the North East of Nigeria. Far
> from it. He is a vastly experienced war General who leads from the
> battlegrounds.
>
> Also it would be recalled that Before the Army of Chad performed the
> superlative military objective of decimating over 1000 boko haram
> terrorists, the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff saw it coming when he
> continuously told newsman that the end of boko haram terrorists is
> imminent.
>
> Soon after Chad struck, the Chief of Army Staff Lieutenant General
> Tukur Yusuf Buratai has landed in the North East of Nigeria and as can
> be seen from information filtering out of the battlegrounds, the
> Nigerian Army is having the upper hand and these successes have
> compelled the framing of the question whether the end has come for
> Nigeria’s most challenging nightmare since the last 60 years which is
> the boko haram terrorists attacks which have killed well over 30,000
> CIVILIANS and destroyed the livelihoods of over 3 million Nigerian
> citizens who are now internally and externally displaced and refugees.
>
> Few hours back, our eyes were delighted with the wonderful story that
> key boko haram terrorists and their leaders have been decimated
> including nearly 105 elements of the TERROR group.
>
> The media reported that several key Boko Haram Terrorists/ISWAP
> leaders have been killed in multiple air strikes conducted by the Air
> Task Force of Operation Lafiya Dole at Durbada in Borno, the Defence
> Headquarters has said.
>
> The Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, in
> a statement on Monday in Abuja, added that structures belonging to the
> terrorists were also destroyed.
>
> Enenche disclosed that the operation, which was executed on April 17,
> came on the heels of credible human intelligence reports.
>
> He said that the intelligence was confirmed by series of Intelligence,
> Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions and indicated that the
> settlement was one of the locations where some of the terrorists’
> hierarchy often hibernate.
>
> According to him, the fighter jets dispatched by the Air Task Force
> took turns in attacking the location scoring accurate hits within the
> target area which resulted in the death of some of the terrorists.
>
> “Others, who were seen attempting to flee the area were taken out in
> follow-on attacks.
>
> “The Armed Forces of Nigeria, in furtherance of the objective of
> restoring peace and security in the North East, will sustain the
> offensive against the enemies of our nation,” he said. (NAN).
>
> As citizens who in the last eleven years have passed through
> nightmarish attacks and blood cuddling violence of the TERROR
> gangsters, I think our major concern should not be the wasting of
> energy in speculating whether it was the Chadian President that ended
> the reign of the terrorists or the Nigerian Army. What should be our
> preoccupation is to show positive solidarity with the Nigerian Army to
> come out victorious in no distant time so the era of uncertainty
> caused by the massive terror campaign can be said to be over and is
> over. We will turn our attention to the question if the terrorists
> and terrorism in the North East of Nigeria can be defeated.
>
> But first, let us debunk a fallacy that has trended for some times now
> in the grapevine that some Military Generals in Nigeria have
> commercialised the war on terror.
>
> It is practically impossible to create the impression that the current
> Army Chief who has introduced a lot of innovations and built many
> giant projects for the institution of the Army including the
> University sited in Borno state will not want the boko haram
> insurgency to come to an end because of some pecuniary reasons.
>
> This is perhaps the most outrageous conspiracy to come from the pit of
> hell to think that someone who has spent over three decades fighting
> to make Nigeria great and has earned one of the most prestigious
> professional rank could descend so low as not to want a war that has
> costs Nigeria several fighters or combatants and billions of dollars
> to end and more so when this same person is from a place considered as
> the frontline of this TERROR attacks which means that his people are
> directly the most affected victims of this ten year old war. This fake
> news is as ridiculous as it can ever be. We will conclude by looking
> at what winning a war on terror should mean.
>
> Philip H.Gordon writing on the theme: “Can the war on terror be won?
> How to fight the right war, published in www.foreignaffairs.com thus:
> “Almost entirely missing from this debate is a concept of what
> “victory” in the war on terror would actually look like. The
> traditional notion of winning a war is fairly clear: defeating an
> enemy on the battlefield and forcing it to accept political terms. But
> what does victory — or defeat — mean in a war on terror? Will this
> kind of war ever end? How long will it take? Would we see victory
> coming? Would we recognize it when it came?
>
> He then afformed that: “It is essential to start thinking seriously
> about these questions, because it is impossible to win a war without
> knowing what its goal is. Considering possible outcomes of the war on
> terror makes clear that it can indeed be won, but only with the
> recognition that this is a new and different kind of war.”
>
> Victory he said will come not when foreign leaders accept certain
> terms but when political changes erode and ultimately undermine
> support for the ideology and strategy of those determined to destroy
> the United States.
>
> “It will come not when Washington and its allies kill or capture all
> terrorists or potential terrorists but when the ideology the
> terrorists espouse is discredited, when their tactics are seen to have
> failed, and when they come to find more promising paths to the
> dignity, respect, and opportunities they crave. It will mean not the
> complete elimination of any possible terrorist threat — pursuing that
> goal will almost certainly lead to more terrorism, not less — but
> rather the reduction of the risk of terrorism to such a level that it
> does not significantly affect average citizens’ daily lives, preoccupy
> their thoughts, or provoke overreaction”.
>
> At that point, as aforementioned he reasoned that even the terrorists
> will realize their violence is futile. Keeping this vision of victory
> in mind will not only avert considerable pain, expense, and trouble;
> it will also guide leaders toward the policies that will bring such a
> victory about.
>
> I will recommend the above scenarios to the Nigerian political
> establishments. Also the other angle of bringing justice to the
> victims of the war by prosecuting and punishing mass murderers must be
> approached holistically. This is where i think we need to copy the
> model used in Chad in dealing with the terrorists. Chad has had to use
> the instrumentality of the law to bring the boko haram terrorists they
> arrested to face the capital punishment. Nigeria must not convey the
> impression that it is profitable to wage relentless TERROR war on
> Nigeria. There should be no negotiations with terrorists.
>
> *Emmanuel Onwubiko is the Head of the Human Rights Writers Association
> of Nigeria
>
andblogs@www.huriwanigeria.com
> [1];www.huriwa@blogpot.com
IS NIGERIA NEARING DENOUEMENT OF TERROR ATTACKS?
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