₦airaland Forum

Nigeria’s current military strategy for defeating Boko Horam is unlikely to succeed, analysts have warned, with the international community largely powerless to defeat the increasingly rampant Islamist group.

Corruption inside the Nigerian army, unpaid wages, and mutinies among troops have all facilitated Boko Haram’s rise, they said. On Sunday the sect, which has killed thousands in its bid to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, kidnapped about 80 people in neighbouring Cameroon. The victims of this latest cross-border attack included many children. The Cameroon army subsequently managed to free 20 of the hostages.


Dr Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Africa programme, said Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, had been manifestly unable to halt Boko Haram’s advance. The opposition leader, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking to unseat Jonathan in the election on 14 February, may be better able to overhaul the country’s dysfunctional military, he suggested.

“The best hope [of defeating Boko Haram] would be the elections. For me the problem is in Nigeria. The answer is in Nigeria.” He added: “I’m confident that so long as President Jonathan is in charge there isn’t much that can be done. He isn’t in control of the military leadership. And the leadership doesn’t control the soldiers on the ground.”

Others, however, were sceptical that the elections would bring about change, predicting instead that they would further polarise divisions between a largely Muslim north and Christian south. Buhari, a Muslim, draws most of his support from Nigeria’s northern provinces, where Boko Haram is active. The group rejects the idea of a secular state. It has promised to disrupt the polls.

“Nigerian politics is a violent and dangerous game. Gangs of thugs are hired to intimidate rivals,” Martin Roberts, senior Africa analyst at IHS Global Insight, said. Roberts predicted that neither side would concede defeat, with suspicion in the north that Jonathan was deliberately allowing Boko Haram to flourish in an attempt to disenfranchise Buhari’s supporters.

Montclos, meanwhile, said there was relatively little the international community could do, following several well-meaning but doomed attempts to boost the Nigerian military.

The US offered surveillance and intelligence help after Boko Haram kidnapped 279 schoolgirls last April during a raid in Chibok, deep in north-eastern Nigeria, sparking global outrage. But an American plan to equip a new Nigerian battalion ended last month in an acrimonious squabble between Washington and Abuja.

Nigerian commanders insisted that the US supply them with attack helicopters and fighter jets to wipe out Boko Haram, something that the White House was unwilling to do, given the army’s poor human rights record. The Nigerian government then abruptly terminated the final phase of the programme. Successive central governments have also deliberately hollowed out the army because of a pervasive fear it could stage a coup.

Tensions between Nigeria and its neighbours, meanwhile, made the prospect of a regional peacekeeping operation fraught.

At a summit last May the French president, François Hollande, announced a new regional force, comprising troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and the Republic of Niger. Each country was meant to supply 700 troops.

But by November the force had failed to materialise. Ghana’s president, John Mahama, who currently heads the west African Ecowas bloc, last week said that an army to fight Boko Haram could be created under African Union auspices. “It’s pie in the sky. It isn’t going to happen,” Roberts predicted.

With Boko Haram staging a series of audacious cross-border raids, Nigeria’s neighbours were now busy defending their own territory. On Monday a convoy of troops from Chad arrived in Maroua, the main town in Cameroon’s far north.

The Chadian army – which helped French forces drive out al-Qaida-linked jihadis from northern Mali in 2013 – has deployed around 2,000 soldiers. Cameroon has also sent thousands of additional troops to its border with Nigeria.

According to Montclos, Chad’s chief goal is to protect its economic interests. Much of Chad’s oil is exported via northern Cameroon. “This is the main reason they intervened,” he said.

The obstacles preventing a regional task force appear insurmountable, observers say. Cameroon and Nigeria have difficult relations.

Niger – a stable, smaller state, with a relatively disciplined army – has found it impossible to coordinate actions against Boko Haram with its Nigerian counterpart.

“Military officers from the Republic of Niger complain that when they call the Nigerian army nobody picks up. What kind of regional cooperation are we talking about?” Montclos asked.

His recent Chatham House report argues that Boko Haram, which has taken control of Borno state in Nigeria’s north-east, is adept at exploiting the state’s chronic institutional weaknesses.

It knows the local terrain well, can navigate around a demoralised and deficient security presence, and is able to attack villages with total impunity. Government troops on the ground suffer from low morale. Local vigilante forces have been unable to stave off violent Boko Haram operations.

On 3 January Boko Haram launched a bloody assault on the towns of Baga and Doron, killing hundreds and razing the area to the ground. Roberts said the army had withdrawn ahead of the raid, after being told the Nigerian air force was about to bomb the rebels. But the plane never arrived. Typically, the army runs away when Boko Haram advances, he said.

Since 2009 Nigeria’s security forces have waged a brutal anti-insurgency campaign, characterised by massacres, extra-judicial killings and arrests without trial.

This onslaught has alienated many civilians and driven communities into the arms of Boko Haram. This repression has driven recruitment, with Boko Haram expanding from an estimated 4,000 members in 2009 to 6,000-8,000 in 2014.

A new report on Tuesday said that the rapidly escalating insurgency had forced a million people to flee their homes. The International Organisation for Migration said there was “growing evidence” of turmoil spreading across Nigeria’s frontiers into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, in addition to those internally displaced by the fighting.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/nigeria-prospects-defeating-boko-haram-look-bleak

clevvermind:
please, don't call my president useless. ok. you can call anybody in your family useless as you like.

But he is useless na

[size=28pt]Yaaay! I ve collected my PVC. Only cancellation of this elections can save mr clueless...cos even if elections are postponed till next year....na buhari we go still vote for[/size]

swtdrms:
Owh! Probably AU has become an appendage of APC, jonathanian with their usual lies and deceit. When different institutions the world over kept on uncovering unprecedented corruption of our gov't, their foolish supportets will always find a way to defend them.
Let us kick Mr Stealing not Corruption
#kickoutcluelessness

i tire ooo

DesChyko:
Details, dude! Details.
All these flippant tosses of figures isn't impressing anyone who takes accuracy serious.

google the story..its everywhere online...

DesChyko:
All these shallow gists aren't the types I draw knowledge from.
Without the details of discovery, how can one be absolutely sure of these facts?

this is the African Union talking....wat other authentification do you need?

[size=24pt]This guy is a cheap criminal without brains.


if he had brains, he would have contacted Obanikoro so that their defense will be uniform.


earlier today obanikoro siad this;

'1. That Senator Obanikoro wishes to state categorically and emphatically that you will never find him anywhere in the world talking about rigging an election in favour of anyone. The context of the conversation being reported by Sahara Reporters has been deliberately concocted, manipulated and misrepresented to achieve a predetermined narrative. Nowhere in the purported recording did Senator Obanikoro mention directly or indirectly a plan to rig the Ekiti State elections as the Sahara Reporters narrative suggests.'


If you read carefully, you will noticed his admission that the conversation took place however his defense was that it was doctored...

now fayose is totally denying he even held the meeting by saying 'he never held any meeting with anyone to rig the June 21, 2014 election'..


Need i say more?

[/size]

Nigeria is the 7th world’s largest producer of hydrocarbon, and accounts for a staggering N6.87 trillion of lost revenue as a result of illegal transfers overseas according to the AU. Nearly 70% of the total revenue that Africa is losing annually.

At the African Union Summit in Ethiopia Sunday, a report by the Thabo Mbeki High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa adopted by the African Union Heads of State said about $40.9billion (about N6.87trillion) of an estimated $60billion (about N10.08trillion) lost through such transfers from Africa are traced to Nigeria.

The AU also said the funds are stolen through corruption, tax evasion and illegal transfer of profits by multinationals.

Nigeria, produces an average of 2.3million barrels of oil daily and is the leading producer of hydrocarbon in Africa, and yet is being ravaged by poverty and underdevelopment.

The report also identified Egypt and Morocco as the other countries with the largest estimates of illicit financial flows statistics of $28.2billion and $20.3billion respectively.

Concerned by the high losses through these illegal transfers, as one of the threats to the inability of most resource-rich countries in Africa to meet their millennium development goals, MDGs, the AU at its 4th Joint African Union Commission/United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, AUC/ECA, Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development constituted the Mbeki Panel to review the underlying issues stalling Africa’s objectives.



http://www.nigerianfm.com/n6-87-trillion-stolen-yearly-from-nigeria-reports-african-union-au/

[size=26pt]First...i want to talk to Ohimai Godwin Amaize who was my junior pressman and a boy i welcomed into Mellanby Hall Press back in the University of Ibadan...

You are working for the wrong man...a man without values. I recall telling you same tin on instagram...

2nd...its nice to see that Obanikoro is not even denying that he was at the said meeting.

3rd...That Sahara reporters claim that they have evidence independently verified by a US Based firm that it is Obanikoro's voice is damning!

4th...to say Sahara reporters is a mouthpiece for APC as a defense shows he has no defense.


lastly....i shake my buttocks for Naija's current government...

i can only look up and remember the words of Obasanjo in his book, 'My Watch' when he said 'before, corruption was at the crridors of power...now it is in the bedroom of power'...


[/size]

onila:
and l planned to go to Dubai this december

went there last year, had so much fun

this is so painful

we can still go if u marry me...

buy the shares...dont mind dis guy...

[size=26pt]well written...[/size]

EUROBOMBER:
[size=24pt]The Nigerian people want JONATHAN! [/size]

[size=26pt]You and who?


Oya lets test na....if you all want GMB..hit like...if you want GEJ, click share...[/size]

Felixsun20:
Helloooooooo...that COW u are supporting is the Super Clueless One. Get a life jareh !

who calls someone 'cow'...


only supporters of the clueless one...

[size=26pt]Oya Reno come and defend your oga...



abi stealing is not corruption?[/size]

[size=26pt]Its even good you listed out the names of the celebs supporting the clueless one...now we know the celebs against the wishes of the Nigerian people![/size]

oneday00d:
Bro its humility on d part of our of amiable president

Humility or desperation?

Popemax:
took selfie with Kenya west and wife.....also took with Jazzy and many more....stop talking nonsense

wetin dis one dey talk...don jazzy and obama? bros wake up...its afternoon already!

[size=26pt]
Abeg where the cleaveage?


@ OP...abeg cleaveage is for people who have standing and existent boo.bs jor!


Now my recourse to Google images tell me that the pictures below are the real 'cleavage'...[/size]

Whynotthetruth:
Is he supposed to stay aloof from his governed In a bid to paint this president bad; you guys sound ridiculous and childish...pele

so just any celeb that feels like it shd have access to the presidency...


go and watch E! u ll see the reverence celebs give an invite to the white house...not just any celebs go there...

crackhouse:
that's what u enjoy in a democratic government. Even Obama of US and Cameron of Britain does that too. so relax, this is not military regime, they are humans like u and not some kind of gods. GEJ till Buhari accept to sit for WASSCE!!

following your analogy..means we are also allowed to call Mr otuoke a dumbhead ba?....dts nice...howz the clueless one doing today?

Baba419:
yes this kid knows how dumb adults can be

And yes again, there were no front facing camera phones back then and who would want to take a selfie with

And please now give me a better reason you dislike Jonathan

your name even says it all...no nid to dissipate energy on u...

Baba419:
yes this kid knows how dumb adults can be

And yes again, there were no front facing camera phones back then and who would want to take a selfie with

And please now give me a better reason you dislike Jonathan

am rily tryin to make sense in wat u wrote...but i cant...go tell ur boss reno to sack u...u aint got brains

Whynotthetruth:
plz shut up and stop making yourself more stu.p.d....what do you have or what have you achieved compared to those dudes you term; "dick and harry"...who knows you outside your nuclear clique? Aren't these people part of the electorates who voted him and who will still vote him

use ur brain...


where the president is...these dudes are tom dicks and harry...


and how stewpid can u be? do u even knw the person u chat with?


mo.ron!

Baba419:
respect your age

There were no selfies then mumu

you get sense so? you meant to say there were no camera fones during obj's time? all these smal small kids sef...

EmoBoy:
Obama takes photos with kim kardashian. I hope you know how she shot herself to limelight?

https://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/screen-shot-2015-02-03-at-1033__oPt.jpg

you dont get the point...obama doesnt take pics with every tom dick and harry...i ve seen mr otuoke with toyin aimaku, bovi, daddy showkey, omoni oboli etc...just cos of elections...

The ease at which people have access to the presidency these days...

Jonathan has cheapened the office...imagine how many celebs took selfie with OBJ those days...

Later the current administration will be saying people should respect the office of the president...