The incident at Maimalari

  Incensed by their loss, the deceased soldiers’ comrades vented their anger by shooting sporadically; they apparently aimed at the General Officer Commanding the Army’s 7th Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed, who the authorities said later was unhurt. The Division includes Maimalari and is headquarters of the forces deployed in the region to counter the […]

  Incensed by their loss, the deceased soldiers’ comrades vented their anger by shooting sporadically; they apparently aimed at the General Officer Commanding the Army’s 7th Division, Major General Ahmed Mohammed, who the authorities said later was unhurt. The Division includes Maimalari and is headquarters of the forces deployed in the region to counter the insurgency.  The soldiers were returning to base in Maiduguri when they were attacked. Several soldiers were also wounded.
The Army authorities are reluctant to characterise the episode as mutiny, and have reacted angrily to such portrayal in the media.
The Director of Defence Information, Major General Christopher Olukolade noted that the incident happened following the death of four soldiers on their way back from Chibok where more than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped over a month ago. He asked the Nigerian media to desist from ‘sensationalizing the reactions of soldiers’ because it was capable of ‘making the country unsafe for all’.  
Various accounts of the incident said that tension rose when soldiers at the Mailamari Barracks saw corpses of the victims of the ambush being brought in. It got worse when General Mohammed arrived at the cantonment to address the troops. He was reported to have shouted down a soldier who was expressing frustration about their alleged lack of proper equipment and reservations over the official explanation of how their comrades got killed. But the gathered troops shouted back at the GOC, demanding explanations on why their colleagues were not properly kitted before venturing out to confront the insurgents.
There had been undercurrents of accusations made by the rank of file of troops deployed for counterinsurgency operations that their superior officers and the military authorities are aware that they were poorly armed in comparison with the insurgents they are supposed to fight against. Some of the allegations the Maimalari soldiers made include non-availability of better and long range fire arms, poor working conditions, non-payment of operational allowances, illegal deductions from entitlements, and that they overstay in their duty posts by several months. They argued that these inadequacies and shortcomings affect their morale in the fight against insurgency.
The episode is the subject of an investigation that the Army has launched. Meanwhile, the GOC General Mohammed has been replaced. The Defence Headquarters’ reluctance in rushing to characterise the Maimalari episode before conducting a full inquiry is understandable. The government has long described the deployment of the troop as engagement in its ‘war on terror’.    
But if the complaints that the soldiers made are true, then what happened at Maimalari was a troubling development. Why are they being short-changed? Why leave soldiers for long periods without being replaced by fresh deployments? Despite the huge budgetary allocations, why are troops still complaining of being poorly equipped?
Borno State Governor Kashim Shettima suggested some time ago that the Boko Haram insurgents were better armed; the Presidency took strong exception to his submission.  The reaction of the soldiers at Maimalari appears to lend some credence to the suggestion and exposes an apparent disconnect between what commanders involved in the operation say and what their soldiers experience is. What is responsible for that? The Army’s panel of inquiry should seek answers to these and many other questions.
The National Assembly should also institute investigations aimed not only at seeking explanations to the immediate cause of the incident, but providing an audit of all the funds appropriated to the military in the past few years in order to determine how these were applied in the fight against insurgency in the country.