Taming the terror

Also published in Daily Trust

The resumption of the escalating wave of Boko Haram terror attacks, which the group had apparently timed to coincide with the inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari as President, was a calculated war strategy designed to challenge the President who, a day after his historic election victory, had resolutely declared that “Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will”.

Unlike in the past when Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau would contemptuously dismiss similar warnings by the then President, Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram must have taken President Buhari’s warning seriously, they consequently decided to audaciously intensify and sustain their terror attacks from the very day he assumed the presidency, in order to challenge his declared resolve to crush them, and, of course, to preempt the anticipated unrelenting military onslaught against them.

In addition to the growing fatalities resulting from their sustained terror attacks, Boko Haram has, for the time since the eruption of the war in 2009, also launched indiscriminate attacks with locally made missiles on Maiduguri metropolis.

Though this is a quite worrisome development, Nigerians can nonetheless rest assured that Boko Haram will now be confronted head-on, unlike during former President Jonathan when government never had adequate political will to do so, which predictably affected the morale of its troops and indeed explained the embarrassing defeats they had suffered at the hands of the ragtag terrorists.

Incidentally, the persistence of Boko Haram attacks has exposed the inaccuracy of the already empty assertion that President Jonathan was actually behind the attacks, which Nigerian conspiracy theorists had insistently clung to. It has also presented the conspiracy theorists with a tricky dilemma that they either accept the fact that their theory is simply incorrect, or else accuse Buhari of being the mastermind behind the current wave of terror attacks hitting the region.

Interestingly enough, a Facebook friend of mine wrote that, he had observed the absence of the regular preventive security checks at the entrance of the mosque where he performed his Friday prayers on the very Friday President Buhari was inaugurated. When he inquired about the reason, he was simply told that, there was no need for such preventive security measures anymore, because Goodluck Jonathan, who was, according to them, the mastermind behind such attacks, was gone. Obviously they had not yet heard of the attacks that took place elsewhere in the region on that very day, when they gave that ridiculous explanation.

The reality is, though the sheer indecisiveness and apathy that defined President Jonathan’s approach to Boko Haram crisis were absolutely inexcusable, the allegation that he was the mastermind behind the attacks, which, ironically, even many educated Nigerians and other opinion leaders had frequently expressed or alluded to, was/is simply not true.

Anyway now that it has appeared clearly that the end of Jonathan administration never means the end of Boko Haram, after all, Nigerians especially those in the worst affected areas of the north east and the other flashpoints across the region should always remain vigilant and take all necessary security precautions for their individual and communal security and safety.

Meanwhile, now that President Buhari prepares to launch what seems to be an all-out war against the insurgents with the assistance of the neighbouring countries and some other countries elsewhere, which he has already begun to approach for necessary strategic cooperation and tactical coordination, it’s imperative that he remain absolutely focused.

I say this knowing that, some people may soon begin to recommend negotiations between government and the terrorists. President Buhari must not pay attention to such recommendations. After all, during former President Jonathan administration, many vested interests had taken advantage of his government’s poor handling of the crisis to propose and claim to facilitate bogus negotiations between government and Boko Haram, while some unscrupulous individuals actually managed to defraud the government under the pretext of arranging such fraudulent negotiations. It is noteworthy that, though negotiations to end Boko Haram crisis can’t be completely dismissed or ruled out, the need to offer or accept it should be determined by its verifiable merits, if any.

In any case, for the time being, the only viable strategy to end the crisis is the use of disproportionate military force to subdue and crush the terrorists. Besides, since the terrorists adopt guerrilla war tactics, indiscriminate bombings and suicide attacks, the military strategists should focus heavily on intelligence gathering about them, their hideouts, sources of funds and weapons as well as their movements, so as to carry out preemptive military attacks against them, accordingly. In the meantime also, the military should also carry out clandestine, sustained and intelligence-based operations to eliminate the leaders of the terror group.

It is only after crushing them as a group that negotiations with the surviving individuals could be considered. Also, the negotiations should in any case focus on addressing the religious misconceptions under the pretext of which they were lured into the group in the first place. Obviously this particular point of negotiations necessarily requires the intervention of experts in Islamic knowledge and jurisprudence, while government explores viable ways to physically, psychologically and economically rehabilitate those willing to abandon extremism and terrorism to enable them to successfully re-integrate into mainstream society.