Boko Haram: Where’s the multinational force?

Take nothing away from the Nigerian military: our officers and men have done a brilliant job in decimating the ranks of Boko Haram insurgents in the past several months since the President declared a time-frame within which he expects the insurgents would have been dispatched from their various perches in theirr various theaters of operation […]

Take nothing away from the Nigerian military: our officers and men have done a brilliant job in decimating the ranks of Boko Haram insurgents in the past several months since the President declared a time-frame within which he expects the insurgents would have been dispatched from their various perches in theirr various theaters of operation in the northeast.
Going from the intermittent news bulletins from the military, it is obvious that except for the expansive Sambisa forest, the deadline will be met. The insurgents have been from Baga, Bama and the rest of the townships. They no longer occupy vast swaths of Nigerian territory to our chagrin. They also lack the ability and capacity they hitherto possessed to engage the Nigerian military in any form of conventional battle. Even the propaganda videos the group routinely issued to taunt the Nigerian state are no longer forthcoming. 
What they can do, and what still gives the military and other security agencies sleepless nights is their inherent capacity to hit soft targets with devastating effect at places and times of their choice. It is the same with all the other terrorist groups the world over. Not even the biggest and mightiest militaries in the world have been able to completely eliminate such sneak attacks, like the one that occurred in Paris a few weeks ago.
But to be able to hit soft targets, terrorists require mobility and hidden bases to operate from. In far too many instances, they are also know to activate and de-activate sleeper cells at times and moments of their choice. The ability to track their movement and to also detect those sleeper cells before they strike now remains the biggest challenge before the Nigerian military and other security agencies.
It is bad enough that the nature of the confrontations have been asymmetric, what troubles me even more is that the sect still retains the capacity to sneak up on unsuspecting villages at will to slaughter defenseless inhabitants before disappearing into the vast void with minimal casualties. It is the most agonizing and perplexing form of guerrilla warfare as anyone with even a pedestrian knowledge of the subject can confirm.
And since such sneak attacks have also occurred in neighboring Cameroun, Chad, and Niger in recent times, we can only assume that the insurgents still possess the capacity to seamlessly maneuver across our vast and porous borders whenever it pleased them to wreak havoc on the border towns and villages. My limited understanding of military tactics suggests that the situation is something the multi-national joint task force (MNJTF) of 8,700 men established several months ago should be able to curtail.
It is now almost six months since the governments of Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Benin agreed to establish an 8,700 strong multi-national force to tackle the insurgency. President Muhammadu Buhari subsequently directed the immediate release of $21 million (N4.2 billion) to the Joint Task Force having earlier agreed on its organizational structure and modus operandi with the other member countries.
It was agreed that Nigeria should spearhead the activities of the force. Following Nigeria’s financial commitment for the take-off of the force, the United States also chipped in another five million dollars as its own support to the force in addition to military hardware which were not specified at the time.
A month later, in August, to be precise, Nigeria’s defence chief of staff, Gabriel Olonisakin, visited Chad to discuss the final preparations for the deployment of the force.  A statement from the Defence headquarters indicated that modalities for the deployment of a joint force to two command posts in Nigeria and Cameroon, were discussed. “Also, officers seconded to the MNJTF in N’Djamena were ordered to report immediately to their post, as operation at the Force Headquarters has commenced,” the statement concluded.
Unfortunately, since then, while the military has spared no effort to educate Nigerians on the ongoing efforts to defeat the insurgents locally, little or nothing have been heard about the activities of the multinational force since its purported deployment months ago.
Today, the information void is such that it is possible that very few Nigerians are aware that the force has even deployed at all. On the contrary, what is very evident is that the insurgents have seized every opportunity to show that it has the capacity to hit border communities on all side at will. And the multinational force, if it actually exists, has not been able to do anything about it.
Has the force any offensive plans at all? Was it conceived to be a rapid deployment force? With little, or no information forthcoming on its activities, all these questions have been left to conjecture. Of one thing though, we can be absolutely certain: if it was contemplated to merely patrol the borders areas of the affected countries, the MNJTF has failed to plug the yawning gaps in our respective borders which the insurgents have continued to exploit at will.
Before Nigerians eventually conclude that it is a phantom force, the MNJTF must urgently work on its information management infrastructure to ensure that sufficient information is available to the public, except of course, if its activities are considered covert in nature. Even so, regular bulletins on accomplished tasks will do no harm!

On the carnage in Zaria…..
In the past one week, there has been a deluge of informed and not so informed commentary on the sad events involving the avoidable confrontation between the members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, and the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff Lt. General Tukur Burutai. I have also watched the video in which very senior officers pleaded in vain with members of the brotherhood to allow the army passage to proceed on his legitimate business.
Pictures, as it is often said, don’t lie. I will not even attempt to interrogate the very critical issue about the rights – if at all they had any- of members of Islamic brotherhood to block a public road. That is a matter for the Judicial Panel of Inquiry to decide. But of one thing I am absolutely certain: any group foolish enough to confront the convoy of the Chief of Army staff with cutlasses and all sorts of projectiles and to do so in the sort of provocative manner I saw in the video, must be on a death wish! And; if I also happened to be the President and Buratai my army chief; I would have summarily dismissed him if he dared to blink, first or retreat in the face of the obvious insolence!
While the terrible loss of life is regrettably, the video dispelled all doubts that the military did its best to avert it.  The Chief of Army Staff is not just anybody. His office personifies the Nigerian state in many respects. It is his duty to defend our national colours along with those of the military establishment. Had he succumbed and retreated like the brotherhood had hoped, it would have sent all the wrong signals to other lawbreakers across the land. It would have amounted to the surrender of the military colours of Nigeria he swore to defend at the cost of his life! His capitulation would have paved the way for the enthronement of anarchy.
Any misguided felon, with a similar death wish, could also decide to block the Lagos to Ibadan expressway tomorrow and tell the authorities to go to hell when confronted. A red line needed to be drawn in the sand. The only regret is that it cost too many needless deaths.