General Uba, media blame games, and the enemy within

By now it is old news and everyone in Nigeria, probably including those hiding under some rock, has heard that Boko Haram scored a major symbolic point this week when they successfully ambushed a Nigerian Army convoy, capturing and killing Brigadier General M. Uba. It is undoubtedly a significant blow to the country to lose […]

By now it is old news and everyone in Nigeria, probably including those hiding under some rock, has heard that Boko Haram scored a major symbolic point this week when they successfully ambushed a Nigerian Army convoy, capturing and killing Brigadier General M. Uba.

It is undoubtedly a significant blow to the country to lose someone of that rank, and especially for his family to have lost a loved one in this manner; his death marketed as a victory to the enemies of this country and its people. We must not forget that while this is a symbolic loss for Nigeria, for his family and friends, this is the loss of a loved one: a father, a husband, a son and a friend.

Perhaps no singular soldier’s death has resonated as much in this crisis as the deaths of General Uba and Lt. Col. Muhammad Abu Ali in November 2016. That both officers died in November is purely coincidental. That both men, and the dozens of others we have lost to this insurgency, had to die is a result of a potpourri of negligence, mismanagement, corruption, and a baffling paucity of political will.

In the aftermath of General Uba’s death, various theories have been advanced as to what happened that led to such a huge symbolic slap in the face of the country by the terrorists. The dominant strain of this narrative seems to point fingers at the media as the culpable party. The accusation is made that if the media hadn’t reported that a military general was missing in action on the frontline, perhaps General Uba, who had escaped the ambush and was awaiting rescue, might have returned to base. Allegedly, media reports intensified Boko Haram’s desperate search for him, which led to his eventual capture and death.

Scapegoating the media in this way will only serve to deflect attention from the real issues, which are that there was a string of strategic failures within the military that allowed this to happen, not least of which was the military’s failure to quickly rescue the general and his men, along with the failure of the military’s public relations coordination with the Nigerian press.

It is unreasonable to expect the media not to publish a story about a general being lost in the field of battle. Whatever idealism we want to bring to this conversation, we simply can’t discard the reality that the press’s fundamental duty is to break the news as quickly as it can verify it. In the age of citizen journalism, could the media have held off publishing the story that a general is MIA on the field of battle? Perhaps. But we must take cognisance of the fact that someone else, with far less discretion than a professional journalist, might have published this story.

It is convenient to blame this tragedy on the press. The military, however, must accept its share of the blame as well. Its braggadocious rebuttal of media reports was counterproductive. Anyone with the most basic understanding of how the media works— and I assume the military’s PR personnel should have an idea—knows that once you refute a journalist’s report, you question his professional integrity. The training a journalist receives is to double down with verifiable evidence to prove that their story is true and that their integrity and professional esteem are intact. This is as fundamental to journalism as the indoctrinations soldiers receive never to lose their weapons.

If the military’s PR team had reached out to the press to explain the operational sensitivity of not publishing those reports and why the press needed to work with the military’s narrative because lives are at stake, no journalist in their right mind would have said no. I dare say the journalists would have even retracted their story for those reasons.

The Nigerian media may not be perfect. Journalists may be afflicted by the Brown Envelope plague, economic precarity, and even questionable professional conduct, but one cannot question where they stand in this fight. The media wants the military to succeed as much as every well-meaning Nigerian does.

So instead of finger-pointing and this sustained attempt to vilify the media, the military and the Nigerian government must question themselves for the systemic corruption and flaccid political will, if any exists, that has blunted our military’s efficiency and stunted its capacity to rid the country of this terrorism scourge over more than a decade of conflict. This is what killed General Uba and the soldiers who fell with him, the APC chieftain in Zamfara, the security officer at Maga, slain while twenty-five students were abducted from the school, and the thousands of innocent or brave Nigerians sacrificed to these monsters—not the media. May their souls find rest, and may God comfort their families and those of our other fallen heroes.

While this attack reminds us of the peak insecurity of 2014, we have not heard of, or received reports of, an immediate retaliation by the military. There have been no heavy bombardments on the terrorists’ camps in punitive strikes while they celebrate a fleeting success, no immediate or daring rescue of the abducted schoolchildren. Not even a strong reaction statement.

Instead, it would seem, as it has always been, that the political leadership of this country is more focused on the acquisition of power. The dispatch of heavily armed officers to storm the Wadata House of the opposition PDP—not Sambisa Forest—indicates where the priority lies.

It is true that Boko Haram in all its variants has multiplied and improved, but the Nigerian military has not remained stagnant either, even if results have largely remained the same. Territories in this country are still held and administered by terrorists, not only in the North East but in the North West as well. This is in addition to the significant pockets of ungoverned spaces scattered across the country.

We have not had a clear strategic approach or rigid timeline to deal with this problem. Even if President Tinubu promised during his campaign that the military and police would be boosted with the mass recruitment of 50 million youths and equipment to tackle this issue, those words have not translated into action.

We can only hope that his comment on this latest incident—that those who threaten the peace of Nigerians will face the full weight of the Nigerian state—will translate into something meaningful. At this point, Nigeria does not need a depressed president. It needs an angry one—one whose rage and wrath, as the Commander-in-Chief, would be directed at these terrorists.

The Senate’s call for an additional 100,000 military personnel to help secure our schools and prevent the ugly incidents at Maga is a much-needed call, but there are a couple of issues with it. First, with regard to the military, this is not a matter of numbers. It is not possible that Boko Haram outnumbers the military, and we can’t say that they are better trained than our professional soldiers. While we can argue that the military is stretched, facing several internal threats to the country, and often performing duties the police should be handling, with better efficiency, equipment, and coordination, it is still capable of eliminating these threats.

The second issue is that our thinking must evolve beyond militarising the country. No country, not even North Korea, and certainly not Nigeria, from the Sahara to the Atlantic, can exist as a massive army barrack. While the military might need to boost its numbers, it is important that the police also enhance both their numbers and professionalism. Soldiers have no business securing schools and marketplaces because that is what the police exist for.

These deaths and the painful, costly sacrifices our troops have made, as have those before them, like the famed Lt. Col. Abu Ali, must not be in vain. Neither should the habitual mass abductions of schoolchildren or the administration of our communities by terrorists be normalised. These criminals have had their 90 days. It is about time we have our one.