Mafialeader:
Another officer round of mine who was rumoured to have been KIA also survived and was pat of those repelling the attack.
We should try to verify before reporting these events, someone from there told me the casualty figure is not was is been reported online.

BabaOwen:
A Nigerian soldier who survived the Boko Haram attack which left over 100 troops dead and many others injured in Metele, Guzamala Local Government Area of Borno on Sunday, November 18th, has narrated what happened.

The soldier identified as Chuks Abaga took to social media to reveal how the superior fire from the Boko Haram insurgents left them demoralised and forced them to retreat. 

He also said that many corpses are still in the bush and are yet to be recovered due to the rescue mission being thwarted by the Boko Haram insurgents even after the attack. 

Below is what he shared on Facebook yesterday. 

Am a Survival of Metele attack on 18th. We were attacked by 5pm by Boko Haram. A soldier on the observation post alerted everybody in the camp were we all took cover and dash into our trenches we started exchange of bullet that lasted for about 15mins, they came with enough gun truck mounted with A.A GUN, the gun truck I can count when the attack was going on was 13 gun trucks, 2 Mrap, 3 Ammo personnel carrier (APC), when we noticed the type of weapon and the rate of volume of fire that was coming from their weapon we were demoralise by their fire power and heavy volume of fire.

We were force to withdraw to avoid been killed by the insurgence we ran into the bushes to save our lives. From there we start to locate our colleague and move to 119 battalion camp where we were welcomed and taken care of. The following morning the morning the 7 bridage Commander came brig. General Yahaya and ask us to go for evacuation of soldiers died body we were given air support so called surveillance in which we are communicating together to go metele to recover bodies.

So we ask the pilot to move ahead of us and tell us the situation of the camp he went ahead and came back that everywhere is Charlie charlie means everywhere is okay from there we carried only 8 dead bodies on the road that lead to the camp from no where we started hearing firing from our camp Boko Haram are in our camp from they started firing at us with there AA gun so we turn back to 119 camp back up till now soldier dead bodies are still in that bush as am speaking to you the Nigerian Army have not recover any dead bodies.

Only that 8 dead bodies we could recover don't let any General deceive you we lost more than 150 soldier in the attack not 44 soldier. I can testify this anywhere.

I have questions for the chief of army staff 
Lt. General TY Buratal
1.What is the role of OPERATION LAST HOLD in North East ?
2.What was the 1 BILLIONS DOLLAR USED FOR?
3.What is the Normal deployment of troops in war

See more; https://www.nationalhelm.co/2018/11/soldier-reveals-what-happened-during-and-after-the-recent-boko-haram-attack.html

bidexiii:



Dude are you sure of your source ...
Posting the soldiers pictures will further land him into trouble, please you can just remove the pictures only. Just saying...

BabaOwen:
A Nigerian soldier who survived the Boko Haram attack which left over 100 troops dead and many others injured in Metele, Guzamala Local Government Area of Borno on Sunday, November 18th, has narrated what happened.

The soldier identified as Chuks Abaga took to social media to reveal how the superior fire from the Boko Haram insurgents left them demoralised and forced them to retreat. 

He also said that many corpses are still in the bush and are yet to be recovered due to the rescue mission being thwarted by the Boko Haram insurgents even after the attack. 

Below is what he shared on Facebook yesterday. 

Am a Survival of Metele attack on 18th. We were attacked by 5pm by Boko Haram. A soldier on the observation post alerted everybody in the camp were we all took cover and dash into our trenches we started exchange of bullet that lasted for about 15mins, they came with enough gun truck mounted with A.A GUN, the gun truck I can count when the attack was going on was 13 gun trucks, 2 Mrap, 3 Ammo personnel carrier (APC), when we noticed the type of weapon and the rate of volume of fire that was coming from their weapon we were demoralise by their fire power and heavy volume of fire.

We were force to withdraw to avoid been killed by the insurgence we ran into the bushes to save our lives. From there we start to locate our colleague and move to 119 battalion camp where we were welcomed and taken care of. The following morning the morning the 7 bridage Commander came brig. General Yahaya and ask us to go for evacuation of soldiers died body we were given air support so called surveillance in which we are communicating together to go metele to recover bodies.

So we ask the pilot to move ahead of us and tell us the situation of the camp he went ahead and came back that everywhere is Charlie charlie means everywhere is okay from there we carried only 8 dead bodies on the road that lead to the camp from no where we started hearing firing from our camp Boko Haram are in our camp from they started firing at us with there AA gun so we turn back to 119 camp back up till now soldier dead bodies are still in that bush as am speaking to you the Nigerian Army have not recover any dead bodies.

Only that 8 dead bodies we could recover don't let any General deceive you we lost more than 150 soldier in the attack not 44 soldier. I can testify this anywhere.

I have questions for the chief of army staff 
Lt. General TY Buratal
1.What is the role of OPERATION LAST HOLD in North East ?
2.What was the 1 BILLIONS DOLLAR USED FOR?
3.What is the Normal deployment of troops in war

See more; https://www.nationalhelm.co/2018/11/soldier-reveals-what-happened-during-and-after-the-recent-boko-haram-attack.html

Mafialeader:
dude are you demented or what ? cant you read what i wrote ?

BabaOwen:
dude are you demented or what ? cant you read what i wrote too?

Mafialeader:
read to comprehend next time with rushing to post nonsense.

Mafialeader:
read to comprehend next time with rushing to post nonsense.

BabaOwen:
my source is don chuks abaga on Facebook.

You can also confirm it yourself, a lot of this guys are getting bolder, I'm sure you saw the way the wife of Lt colonel sakaba wife threaten the military on Instagram, I'm sure that's why they visited her. She heard about her husband death more than a week after he was killed on the Internet.

bidexiii:



@Babaowen you will land these soldier into trouble. I know what they are going through hell and that was what I said some few pages back that some people attacked me.
Posting is pictures will further land him in hot soup, few months ago a soldier that made a video on "our MUMU don do" is cooling off his head somewhere now. Please kindly remove them or I'll do the needful.

BabaOwen:
okay...I will remove the one I screenshot from his Facebook page, but the one I first posted, I got it from this source

https://www.nationalhelm.co/2018/11/soldier-reveals-what-happened-during-and-after-the-recent-boko-haram-attack.html

Should I also delete it?

bidexiii:



Please the images and the links will do, Tnx man.

BabaOwen:
Done.

LTGEN:

your rantings and ravings have put this young man in trouble.
if a soldier has grievances there is a proper way and channel to report to.
that channel is not on facebook. it is not on social media
unlike you that are a faceless warrior who never had a bullet whiz by his head, he signed up to join the ARMY
to protect people like you with his life.
Unlike you He does not get to walk away scot -free
The NA is not a democratic institution and you or him should not of put his face on this page.

bidexiii:



Tnx man.

olapluto:
NA say they lost 23 men. Twitter journalists say it is over 100. BHT video shows about 10 soldiers dead or killed.

Moral of the story- In this season of politics, unofficial sources are invested in casualty figures and should bedisregarded.

BabaOwen:
Why Nigeria will NOT defeat Boko Haram in 20 years



This is a personal journey: Before I left for the United Kingdom in September 2017, I promised myself that my master degree was not going to be just another one. I said to myself that this one will be one that equips me to help Nigeria in her walk and work towards development.

In my written goal for the programme, I wrote that this degree will equip me to help Nigeria “as the country inches her way out of the claws of Boko Haram, an extremist group in the northeast,” by “working with development partners from across the world, who are focused on redeveloping the northeast region in the fastest possible time”.

As a brief background, I have worked on a few journalistic projects dealing with insurgency in the northeast, with the last being about the attack on civilian refugee camps in Rann, the northmost town in Nigeria, where over 126 people were killed. On arrival at the University of Sussex, the world’s best school for development studies, ahead of Harvard and Oxford, I was keenly looking for module choices that could help me address the problems I saw first hand in the northeast.

After learning about hands-on media tools, critical perspectives to development and social change, and other media-related issues, I wanted to learn more about insurgencies and how the mind of a terrorist works.

I enrolled with the School of Global Studies to take a course in irregular warfare, and learn more about the mind of an insurgent. I did not bargain for what I got. Long story cut short, I studied all irregular warfares in the 20th and 21st century. From my experience as a journalist, who has reported the war in the northeast, and my study of irregular warfares across the world, I wrote what I consider a fascinating paper on how Nigeria can defeat Boko Haram. The paper will be made available when published.

The rest of this column this week will share a few insights from the paper, and why I think we cannot defeat Boko Haram in the next 20 years if we continue on this path.

WHAT IS NIGERIA’S COUNTERINSURGENCY STRATEGY?

Have you ever asked yourself what Nigeria’s counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is? In my interactions with soldiers, government officials, victims, and aid workers involved in the Boko Haram war, there is a simple retort: “that information should be classified”. Bloody civilians are not privy to such information.

No insurgency in the history of the 20th and 21st century has ever been won this way. Not one.

Broad COIN strategies are known, and are prosecuted with the support of the citizens. The fine details are what the military keeps as classified. To win any irregular warfare, you need “the population” on your side. The population in this sense are those people, whom the government has a responsibility to protect and whom Boko Haram uses as a weapon against the state. They are the victims of the war.

From my understanding of the war, Nigeria’s broad COIN is to outkill Boko Haram. This is simplistic use of brute force. Military spendings from 2011 to 2015 shows that Nigeria spent $16.382 billion on defence, but made little progress against Boko Haram. In fact, when military spendings were plotted against number of Boko Haram inflicted death, I found that the more we spent, the more deaths we recorded. The more we spent, the more Boko Haram progressed.

Boko Haram knows that we want to outkill them, so they use classic irregular warfare tactics to outmaneuver the military and lead the ill-equipped Nigerian forces into numerous ambushments.

Boko Haram’s ideology may not be too clear, or may be seen as “a mishmash of opportunism” as Cameron Duodu suggest, but we cannot deny the fact that there is an ideology. And you can’t kill an ideology with simple military force; for every terrorist killed, more fuel is added to the insurgent’s ideology tank for revenge. Or how do you kill the terrorism that looks down the barrel of your gun and sees paradise?

Until we have a strategy that includes force and counter-ideology, we would continue to lose money, arms, gallant soldiers, and the war itself.

FEW LESSONS FROM OTHER WARS

Of all the irregular warfares in the two centuries under review, the closest to the Boko Haram war, in my opinion, is the Malayan War of 1948 to 1960. This same war has been adjudged by many scholars and military experts as the classic counterinsurgency success for the British government, and a template, by which many other counterinsurgencies are executed or/and judged.

This war lasted 12 years! In the first two years, the British army was doing exactly what the Nigerian army has been doing with Boko Haram in the past nine years — exerting military force, and attempting to outkill insurgents.

Like Boko Haram, the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) had a better understanding of the geography and extreme temperatures, and used it as a complimentary weapon against the army; they had the sympathy of the population; and the necessary disappearance and operational agility.

MRLA avoided open battle but preferred ambushes, and fled along known jungle trails whenever engaged. This made it extremely difficult for the British forces to ascertain whether the enemy had been eliminated or simply melted away to return at a later date.

Same case as Boko Haram: A soldier who was raised in southern Nigeria is sent to Kagoro, Kala Balge, or Sambisa to fight insurgents who were raised in the region. Insurgents who know every nook and cranny of these forests, they use the terrain — which is the soldier’s blind spot — as a weapon. They lay an ambush, and kill soldiers for fun.

During the Malayan war, security forces conducted sweeps, destroying residences from which insurgents were perceived to have received some sort of support, and due to distrust, the British army often shot innocent civilians they found running away — so is the case with the Nigerian army. This made the people more sympathetic to the insurgents and made intel gathering next to impossible.

After two years of defeat, Field Marshal Montgomery wrote in 1951, a clear plan of action and a fit-for-purpose man to execute the plan was needed for victory in the Malayan war: “We must have a plan. Secondly, we must have a man. When we have a plan and a man, we shall succeed: not otherwise”.

By 1952, the Brits yielded to Montgomery and hatched a civil-military plan, led by General Gerald Templer, and prosecuted the plan for the next eight years, leading to the end of the insurgents.

After losing in our early years, Nigeria in 2014 also hatched a plan; the National Counter Terrorism Strategy (NACTEST), which was updated in 2016. Are you hearing this for the first time? I thought so too.

NACTEST as a COIN plan is ambiguous; has no designated lead ministry or agency, has no clear-cut coordination plan. The strategy as a whole is domiciled under the office of the national security adviser (NSA), who has no statutory role, rather than just advising the president. He does not have the power to fully implement the strategy as Templer did with British COIN in Malaya. The NSA has simply asked all ministries to open counterterrorism desks. Desks!

Time and chance will not permit me to discuss the French and American COIN in details, but there are immense lessons, highlighting the fact that Nigeria cannot defeat Boko Haram this way. To defeat a rag-tag fighting force like Boko Haram or ISWAP, we need to go back to 1994 and listen to UNDP: “The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where victory spells out freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want”.

Nigeria needs civil-military operations that ensure we win the sympathy of the population, an understanding of the fighting terrain, economic liberty for those who are potential Boko Haram recruits, and then some sheer military force. This cannot be achieved in a hurry, the earlier, the better.

For more explanation of the British, French and American counterinsurgency plans as it relates to Nigeria, reach ‘Mayowa on Twitter @OluwamayowaTJ

© 2017 Copyright TheCable. All Rights reserved.

Litmus:



In short, Nigeria should try and win hearts and minds, beg a little, increase economic prosperity, provide jobs, rehabilitate terrorists and so on. How do we do this in Chad, Togo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Cameroon and, in future, if not now-ongoing, further afield where Bokoharam/iswap recruits/will recruit unemployed toe-rags, imbeciles, fanatics and opportunists?