Youths rushed in where …

So how are they to know?’I haven’t heard this song in a long time and can’t even remember the name of the artiste, but I couldn’t help remembering it when all the headlines yesterday screamed that young vigilantes and hunters had helped to liberate the Boko Haram- conquered town of Mubi.I mean it was only […]

So how are they to know?’
I haven’t heard this song in a long time and can’t even remember the name of the artiste, but I couldn’t help remembering it when all the headlines yesterday screamed that young vigilantes and hunters had helped to liberate the Boko Haram- conquered town of Mubi.
I mean it was only last week that this paper reported about the many prominent North Easterners who can’t go home because they have lost ‘home’ to the insurgents. And for several weeks we have heard nothing from the war-front but the very shameful news of how Boko Haram has been making mince meat of our soldiers; by killing some, overrunning others in their barracks and chasing others more into Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republics.
While we watched helplessly, the citizens of a nation whose armed forces cannot defend her, our youths, the vigilante and the hunters did the unthinkable. They picked up arms and rushed into the lion’s den, so to speak, of Boko Haram. They went where our armed forces feared to tread, they gave up their lives where our uniformed protectors preferred to run and hide.
All that talk about the hunters and vigilantes being assisted by our troops does not impress us. As far as we are concerned they are the ones being sustained by tax-payers money to defend us, if they had to be led by amateur volunteers, with no formal military training to do their work, then they are as good as dead to us; we won’t acknowledge their back-up role in the liberation of Mubi.
If it wasn’t for the fact that they have got themselves fully distracted by the events in Iraq and Syria, international media would have had a field day reporting this show of shame by the Nigerian armed forces throughout yesterday and today. I mean here is the military of one of the most powerful countries in Africa, the chief contributor when it comes to peace-keeping all over the continent, being bailed out by some rag-tag army of hunters and vigilantes because on its own it cannot face the insurgents.
With 19 more local governments to liberate, now that Mubi is back in Nigeria, will our armed forces still play a back-up role while local hunters and the vigilantes lead the fight? By whatever yardstick you measure it, this is a thing of shame that must not be repeated if we still wish to hold our heads up high in front of sister African nations. Our military personnel are some of the best-trained in the world. From the very beginning this country has spared no expense to see that our officers and men are given the required training that will equip them to tackle any threats to the nation’s sovereignty or territorial integrity. Yet just when we need to see the proof of this supposedly wise investment, we found ourselves disappointed.
In the beginning, surviving soldiers always told media men that they were out-gunned and out-numbered; that the insurgents somehow managed to have superior firepower which made it an unequal combat with the soldiers of a whole nation. With this new development, in which young hunters, very likely using archaic weapons, were able to turn the tables against the insurgents and liberate Mubi, we now know that what our military lacked was morale and will-power not weapons or size.
It is indeed a sad day for us to acknowledge that our soldiers, went all over the world to learn the art of war, only to end up relying on young men who probably have never left their local government for any kind of martial training. Even more sad is the fact that the soldiers are happy to play second fiddle to the local hunters. It is as if they have said to themselves ‘as long as others will provide the first line of defence, we will be happy to support them’, what a shame.
As a nation we are now faced with having to chose our new heroes.
Between the fleeing VIPs, those who can’t go home and are now holed up in their Abuja mansions waiting for the coast to clear, to the soldiers, who have fled to over our neighbouring countries or are content to be led by civilian vigilantes, we are left with no choice but to say we have no heroes to salute. But these young men who displayed so much courage as to go and sack the murderous marauders called Boko Haram, are the troops we should hail with all our might.
Maybe they are motivated by the fact that unlike the VIP Muhajjirs (emigrants) they have no Abuja mansions to run to, so they have to stay there and salvage their lands together. Even if this is what caused the vigilantes to put up such a brave fight and chase Boko Haram from Mubi, they still deserve our praise and respect for opting to put up a fight. After all those who are paid to fight actually abandoned their posts and fled.
Now that many residents have confirmed to news men that Boko Haram had indeed been routed out of Mubi, the federal government must take stock of the hunters and vigilantes, who were said to have been aided by their colleagues from other Northern States, in order to pay them.
These people after all did what paid servants of the state couldn’t do. And with 19 more local government areas to liberate from the insurgents, the government has to rise fast to retain these brave warriors or else risk losing those territories for good.
It is obvious that the main actors in this federal government are more concerned with winning the elections in 2015 than with ending the bloodshed in the North-east. What else can explain why the President and all his men went ahead to stage his grand re-election jamboree, a day after scores of pupils and teachers at that Yobe school were massacred in cold blood? A sensitive government would have declared a day of mourning and cancelled all festivities.
It is up to this VIP Muhajjirs to put enough pressure on the government to ensure that the hunters and vigilantes are well-rewarded for their heroism. In the final analyisis, we must remember the words of a Mubi resident who was captured and taken to the Boko Haram commander there, before they were routed out. He told the BBC, as reported in Daily Trust of yesterday, ‘When we reached there I saw the leader, but I was not allowed to speak to him because he cannot speak Hausa. They speak a strange language, as well as Hausa. But the leader cannot not speak Hausa.’
This bit of information is important if we want to unravel the Boko Haram mystery. What language do they speak that a known native of Mubi cannot recognize at all? Are we dealing with foreigners, whom because some of them can speak Hausa are being used as mercenaries to destroy Northern Nigeria? We must must dig deep for answers to this ‘strange language’ issue. Meanwhile we must rise, as a nation, in salute to the hunters and vigilante youths who did what our military couldn’t do.
Well done our new heroes!