Chibok girls: What I would have done as commander -Col. Kontagora

It is 90 days now since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted yet no major measures are seen to have been taken to rescue them. What is your view?It is unfortunate that the episode came with too many dramas. First, there was this issue of acceptability, did it happened or not?  There were doubts here and […]

It is 90 days now since the Chibok schoolgirls were abducted yet no major measures are seen to have been taken to rescue them. What is your view?
It is unfortunate that the episode came with too many dramas. First, there was this issue of acceptability, did it happened or not?  There were doubts here and there over their abduction. Secondly, we were caught pants down because we never had such massive abduction by Boko Haram before. Thirdly, the military just had a change of guard from a commander to another commander so they must strategize and the commander must familiarize himself with the operation to contain the insurgents.  
These three things affected the rescue operation in respect of the abducted girls. If a segment of the society does not believe the abduction was real it will affect the rescue operation. It’s a very serious issue, while we are still fighting the insurgents. People should not under-rate their insurgents strength and planning. If there is a segment of the society that believes the episode didn’t happen, it’s a plus for the insurgents. They have won a division in the society because what it means is that we cannot have a joint operation to execute the rescue mission.
We are used to Boko Haram throwing bombs and little abductions in the operational areas but this time they came to a school and abducted the girls. We should have taken precaution because this is an insurgency that is anti-western education so anything that has to do with this ought to have been protected.
It’s over 80 days now since our young girls were taken and my mind always goes to the families of the girls. It is very traumatizing, whether you believe it or not, those families have not seen their children that is the reality.  I read from the papers that some of them have died as a result of depression. Unfortunately, because of the three things I earlier mentioned, no immediate response for their rescue would have been possible.

Why?
Rescuing such a number of girls will require a lot of resources in terms of manpower, arms and ammunition.  Rescue missions are not done in haste because the aim is to get the victims rescued safely and rejoined them with their families. It is not possible for the soldiers to charge through Sambisa forest trying to rescue them because in the process they may kill some of them.
I don’t know the level of the army preparedness when it happened but I believe the field commander would have launched some preemptive attacks on the camps of the insurgents.
Not directly hiting the camps but to create some movements that would create displacement of the communities in that area and through the process of rehabilitating of the displaced people they can gather more information and we may be lucky to rescue some of the girls.

How do you mean?
I don’t want to jeopardize the planning of my junior commander.

Alright, but if you are in charge how would you have gone about it?
It depends on the resources available to the commander because it is going to be a massive operation, very massive operation.
It depends on the resources available. Do you have the required aircraft, do you have enough helicopters, guns,  artilleries to make the movement, do you have civil society ready to receive the displaced, are you prepared to set up camps for them? These required a lot of resources and planning.
We are fighting a limited war already so there is nothing new in assaulting some of the insurgents camps.  They have attacked us severally even here in Abuja so there won’t be anything new bombing some areas to get the panic and allow some movement so that soldiers can charge through the forest, take over some of their camps.
The soldiers are not going to fire into the population but any attempt to capture those camps will meet with resistance from the insurgents but it will still send panic to the camps and definitely women and children must move out to leave the combatants to sort themselves out. By this, we have created displacement and we won’t give them time to strategize and even taken the girls beyond our reach. I don’t believe some of the girls are still in Nigeria, some of them might have been moved.
It will depend on how they were distributed among the groups. This is the saddest part of it. And it is because of the time their abduction has taken. We need to do a lot of intelligence and we also need some movement to sieve out the people from the insurgents and as well get more information.

Is there still hope of rescuing those of them that might have been taken out of the country?
Yes, I believe so. We share a very large border with Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Now that they are cooperating with us it will be possible to get them back. Cameroon recently deployed troops near the border and they have assaulted some of the insurgents camps in Cameroon. Initially they were not interfering but now they are taking action.
Chadians have been taking precautions because they are hardened on insurgency. They know what it means because they have been living with it for long. Niger, as complacent as we are, their insurgency is with the Tuareg in the desert. They are conversant with the desert not this one.
And don’t forget that the tribe in these areas are the same. They are the same Kanuri in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and in Niger. That is why they can move freely. So it is a very tricky operation.  
When you see them throwing bombs here and there now it is because the military has taken some decisive actions on them and it shows some panic on the part of the insurgents. They want to show they are fighting on, destabilize our thought and make us withdraw troops from the operational areas to other places so as to reduce our assault on them. You should know they won’t start a war if they are not ready to prosecute it.
They can’t say they are challenging Nigeria if they are not prepare to prosecute it. Boko Haram is not like the oil thieves in the Niger Delta or militancy to control pipelines. They are ideological insurgency with the believe that they have an ordained mission to spread the concept of their believe to Nigerians. So you can see that its different from what we have in Niger Delta economic militancy where they are fighting over control of a broken oil pipe.
When you hear the oil militants talking it is based on their experience of what is going on in the creek not on Boko Haram. I am happy the foreign powers have joined Nigeria in rescuing the girls. If it were that easy they wouldn’t have come to help. Because of the complexity of the operation, you have the Americans, British, French and Israeli on one mission, it shows that its complex.
 
Would their rescue have taken this long if it happened in any of these countries?
It depends on the complicity. The planning may take long if you want to reduce the number of casualty. You cannot just charge through the forest to rescue the girls. I believe substantial number of the girls could still be rescue from that forest. But I cannot rule out the possibility of some of them being taken out of the country because of their spread and network. For instance, if they give some of the girls as wives to their field commanders, as Shekau said, they must have taken them to their safe locations where they reside outside the country.
 It is really touching but the reality is that some of them might have contacted diseases or subjected to heinous abuses.  Some of them could not stand it, many of them may not be able to and some of them might even have died. Imagine yourself in that forest, with strange people, it is not easy at all. That is why we must not relent in our efforts to rescue them. It may take some time but we will get the girls back. Those three things I mentioned earlier were the most disturbing aspect of what affected the efforts to rescue them.  The disbelieve that they were abducted.  
If there was the believe, in the first place, that they were taken the sequence of operation that would have been taken before they were settled probably would have yielded result. It took up days before they were showed in a video and almost all of them were in one camp. That shows that if there was that believe that they were abducted and we responded in time all the massive deployment of troops which has led to a shortfall in the strength of the army and others might not have been necessary. And  it would have safe us some time and agony.