Boko Haram: Confidentiality of news sources

Also published in Daily Trust 

The recently released Boko Haram propaganda video shows many of the more than two hundred abducted Chibok girls along with an armed masked man offering the federal government a swap deal to release the girls in exchange for the release of their captured fellow terrorists by the Nigerian military and other security agencies. However, though he defiantly reiterated the group’s determination to carry on their terror attacks, he nonetheless betrayed exhaustion-induced despair the group is apparently groaning under due to the sustained military pressure on them since the beginning of this administration.

Following the release of the video, the Nigerian Army declared Hajia Aisha Wakil, a member of the now dormant Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, Ahmed Salkida, a journalist and Ahmed Bolori, an activist, for alleged link with the terror group. By the way, though the administration of President Buhari has considerably weakened Boko Haram terrorist group, which consequently faces imminent defeat, the failure of the military and intelligence agencies to locate the whereabouts of the abducted girls, let alone rescue them remains a huge source of embarrassment to it, considering how their abduction attracted the interest of the international community and influential non-governmental organizations around the world.

Army-Shiite clashes: JCI report at a glance

Also published in Daily Trust

In the aftermath of the late last year’s Army-Shiite bloody clashes in Zaria, and amid the ensuing heated controversy over the justifiability or otherwise of the amount of force used by the Army against the Shiites, I wrote a two-part article titled ‘The external dynamics of Zaria incident’ on December 18and 25, 2015 respectively, in which I avoided speculation over the party responsible for sparking the clashes pending the outcome of the official inquiry into the incident. I, instead, dwelt on the underlying external dynamics behind it, which, among other dynamics, represent the context in which the circumstances of the incident are properly understood.

Now that the Judicial Commission of Inquiry commissioned by Kaduna state government in the wake of the incident to conduct a thorough public inquiry into the immediate and remote causes of the clashes, and give recommendations on the ways to forestall its recurrence in the future has submitted its report, a mere glance at the report shows how much effort the commission members had put into making the report as exhaustive and objective as possible, notwithstanding the decision by the Zakzaky-led Shiite group to boycott its proceedings. After all, whatever they would have said, had actually been said by their fellow Shiites and other apologists who made presentations in the course of the proceedings.