http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/31/buhari-crackdown-nigeria-fails-boko-haram


Buhari's crackdown in Nigeria fails to stamp out Boko Haram
A year ago at his inauguration the president promised to eliminate the terror group, still classed as one of the world’s most deadly
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday 31 May 2016 13.56
Time is up for Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president and former army general, who promised before his inauguration on 29 May last year to stamp out Boko Haram within 12 months – and has singularly failed to do so, despite a tough military crackdown in the country’s north-east.

While the terrorist group, blamed for 20,000 deaths over the past seven years, has taken a beating, it is down but not out. Analysts warn, meanwhile, that Buhari’s harsh approach to unrest of any kind may be causing more problems than it solves across Nigeria as a whole.

At a summit in Abuja earlier this month, Buhari appeared to admit the difficulty of fulfilling the task he set himself. The meeting included representatives from Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. France, the US, Britain and the EU, who back the anti-Boko Haram campaign, also attended.


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Despite increased support from London and Washington, which have each sent about 300 troops to the region in a training and advisory capacity, Buhari’s aim was yet closer military cooperation via an expanded international effort.

“I believe Buhari is acknowledging ... that it is not easy for the military to just go out there and eliminate Boko Haram,” Martin Ewi of the Institute for Security Studies told al-Jazeera. “The rural areas have always been neglected when it comes to security and that has always been the problem – the ungoverned places.”

Nigerian army offensives have won back territory from Boko Haram in the past year, and the number and frequency of terrorist attacks has fallen significantly.

Last year’s dramatic announcement by Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, that he was entering into an alliance with Islamic State appears to have been a propaganda stunt amounting to little in practical terms.

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Yet when one of the 276 Chibok schoolgirl hostages abducted in 2014, Amina Ali Darsha Nkeki, was rescued earlier this month, Buhari made great play of it, having her flown to meet him in Abuja. The fuss looked like a slightly desperate bid to deflect attention from the fact the other girls remain unaccounted for.

Also contradicting the official “winning” narrative is evidence that faced by more determined military pressure, Boko Haram is resorting to wider use of suicide bombings, carried out by women and children, and increased attrition, including more hostage-taking.

According to the 2015 Global Terrorism Index, a survey by the New York-based Institute for Economics and Peace, Boko Haram remains the most deadly terrorist group in the world.

And there are growing fears that, evolving in parallel to the internationalisation of the counter-terrorism campaign, a once localised hardline Islamist movement is morphing into a regional jihadist threat.


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The disastrous economic and social legacy of Boko Haram’s depredations, and a linked, ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Lake Chad basin, has brought calls for Buhari to adopt a more constructive approach extending beyond crude military suppression tactics.

Amnesty International claimed recently that the Nigerian army, notorious for past human rights abuses, had killed 350 Muslim civilians in northern Kaduna state and secretly buried them in a mass grave.

In a statement linked to the Abuja summit, the UN security council urged regional states to pursue “a comprehensive strategy to address the governance, security, development, socio-economic and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis”.

The independent Brussels-based International Crisis Group said Boko Haram was “seemingly on a back foot, but it is unlikely to be eliminated in a decisive battle”. Regional powers should “move beyond military cooperation and design a more holistic local and regional response”.

In particular, the ICG said, Nigeria and its allies should more effectively collate and exploit information gathered from captured fighters, abductees, defectors and civilians in newly recaptured areas.

Nnamdi Obasi, the ICG’s senior analyst for Nigeria, warned that Buhari’s tough approach was having a negative knock-on effect in other Nigerian trouble spots. He pointed in particular to the south-east, where Igbo secessionist groups are demanding the restoration of the ill-fated republic of Biafra.


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Nigeria’s Middle Belt has seen increasing levels of violence between local communities, while the 2009 peace deal that ended the insurgency in the oil-rich Niger Delta is unravelling, Obasi said. Up-and-coming militant groups included the so-called Niger Delta Avengers and the Egbesu Mightier Fraternity.

Peaceful manifestations of unrest had been met with harsh measures, including arbitrary arrests.

“Both groups have sent the government their lists of demands, mostly for local control of oil revenues, threatening even more crippling attacks if they are ignored. The government’s response – deploying more military assets and threatening an unmitigated crackdown – portends an escalation of the violence,” Obasi said.

Insecurity and social tension is being aggravated across Nigeria by its deteriorating economic situation, a 70% year-on-year devaluation of the national currency, the naira, fuel and power shortages, rising unemployment and continuing problems with endemic corruption, the ICG said.

A poster displaying wanted Boko Haram suspects. Photograph: Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

While the terrorist group, blamed for 20,000 deaths over the past seven years, has taken a beating, it is down but not out. Analysts warn, meanwhile, that Buhari’s harsh approach to unrest of any kind may be causing more problems than it solves across Nigeria as a whole.

Clearly, u cannot fight fire with fire. U cannot fight protesters with AK47. They too will pick AK47 and matters worst, unlike Boko Haram trained to fight and die these one will fight run, return and fight like gorillas.

If time was up for Buhari at all,it won't be Boko Haramwise, Abeg talk another one

ok

This is what PMB gets when he travels all round the planet.

Imagine what the int'l community is saying about Nigeria...

Then you see how PMB ruins Nigeria by granting EXTRA-EXCLUSIVE interviews to foreign journalists.

Sorry, no comment from me.

We dey wait for another may 29th

How come this so call foreign paper is more interested in what is happening in Nigeria than in their own country? Are we sure than we don't have Nigerian editors in this news outlets?

rottennaija:
How come this so call foreign paper is more interested in what is happening in Nigeria than in their own country? Are we sure than we don't have Nigerian editors in this news outlets?

Becos, they have power to pass UN resolution that will get Buhari running all the way back to Daura and divide Nigeria.

good news

.

What do I even use this space for??

The old one was and is still going about making bogus promises as if he is the almighty. They said Johnathan was clueless and incapable to rule. Today, with myriad of problems here and there, Buhari has learned that governance is in fact rocket science. What a pity...

Dear God

Please help transform Nigeria into a peaceful, happy and respected nation.

Make Nigerians the happiest group of people in the world!

We need your intervention baba God!

Following

Bahamas you don hear naa,abeg comot make we find competent man put there abeg;



Fayose 2019 should Nigeria remain till then

MAKE UNA DIVIDE DIS COUNTRY MAKE PERSON REST ABEG!

Make Nigeria divide jooor
I neva enjoy one Nigeria since dem born me
Make everyone answer him papa now

It's unfortunate that today we the Igbos are shading crocodile tears after betraying chief Ojukwu severally when he was alive, Ojukwu brought his party APGA and contested in the presidential election under it,he didn't win a single state in the whole of the east,his party only won gubernatorial in only Anambra state, and in 2015 we sold Anambra again which is the only APGA state to the PDP. And now our politicians are sponsoring a dead movement called biafra,the real Biafra died and was buried with Ojukwu,its better we retrace our steps in this country cos we cannot fight for those few aggrieved politicians who are only feeding their pockets. Pls ndigbo we shud stop that hypocrisy. I know u will insult me but at least I've bared my mind. Oya start the insults.

It's unfortunate that today we the Igbos are shading crocodile tears after betraying chief Ojukwu severally when he was alive, Ojukwu brought his party APGA and contested in the presidential election under it,he didn't win a single state in the whole of the east,his party only won gubernatorial in only Anambra state, and in 2015 we sold Anambra again which is the only APGA state to the PDP. And now our politicians are sponsoring a dead movement called biafra,the real Biafra died and was buried with Ojukwu,its better we retrace our steps in this country cos we cannot fight for those few aggrieved politicians who are only feeding their pockets. Pls ndigbo we shud stop that hypocrisy. I know u will insult me but at least I've bared my mind. Oya start the insults.

All these bloggers self......


See how he captioned it as though it was somethong serious

afanide:
All these bloggers self......
See how he captioned it as though it was somethong serious

Read well and go to article, the title is exactly the purpose for the article.

Icc

rottennaija:
How come this so call foreign paper is more interested in what is happening in Nigeria than in their own country? Are we sure than we don't have Nigerian editors in this news outlets?

How come this so call rottennaija don't know that foreign media organization has their men on ground in every con3

manutdrichie:


How come this so call rottennaija don't know that foreign media organization has their men on ground in every con3

And you are sure that you are not the editor or written?

No be oga fault jare! He thought it was easy,like sipping a glass of burukutu . Them even force am for he mouth to talk sef....Na tinubu and the rest of them push am put o....if u observe very well...he wasn't ready to be the president...He said it few days ago..."He was surprised wen d other idiot,now called hero,congratulated him"

The dullard is beyond help, the !diotic mofo goes about stoking problem all over the country. Thank God the global community is taking note & putting the blame on him, he will not excape the ICC. If Charles Taylor, Gbagbo & Omar Bashir could not excape the ICC, then I dont see how Buhari will go free after all the atrocities he commited & is still commiting since he came to power, from killing of protesters in Aba & Onitsha to killing of shiites in zaria & now the Niger Delta! WE ARE KEEPING THE RECORD!!!

Somewhere in Nigeria, Anyim is praising Buhari. that he has Performed beyond expectations. okay!

Let's say....

7 more years remaining for the suffering


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/06/buhari-performed-beyond-expectations-anyim/

The war against terrorism may not have been absolutely won but nobody can fault the fact that a lot of gains have been made by the military. The mistake the APC made was setting a time-limit for defeating Boko Haram. The fight against terrorism has no timeline.

Terrorism is a universal citizen and no nation is immune to terrorist attacks. France, a powerful nation, with better intelligence and adequately trained security agents, has been recently hit by a series of terrorist attacks which underscore the vulnerability of many nations to acts of terrorism.

The other acts of civil unrest threatening the fragile peace in the country are symptomatic of a country with dysfunctional system of government. There is a need to take another look at the state of our federation. This nation is in dire need of restructuring as the current system is too asphyxiating and totally antithetical to progress.

Time for what?

WASMOG:
It's unfortunate that today we the Igbos are
shading crocodile tears after betraying chief
Ojukwu severally when he was alive, Ojukwu
brought his party APGA and contested in the
presidential election under it,he didn't win a
single state in the whole of the east,his party
only won gubernatorial in only Anambra state,
and in 2015 we sold Anambra again which is
the only APGA state to the PDP. And now our
politicians are sponsoring a dead movement
called biafra,the real Biafra died and was buried
with Ojukwu,its better we retrace our steps in
this country cos we cannot fight for those few
aggrieved politicians who are only feeding their
pockets. Pls ndigbo we shud stop that
hypocrisy. I know u will insult me but at least
I've bared my mind. Oya start the insults.

You've posted this on countless threads now. Aren't you tired?
All these yoruba carrying Igbo matter for head, na wah for una o.