General Christopher Musa, the Chief of Defence Staff, has explained why the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist groups has lasted for so long.
The group began sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressed in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.
The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria.
Apart from the killing of tens of thousands of innocent citizens in the region, about 2.3 million people have been displaced by the conflict since May 2013.
Appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday, the Chief of Defence Staff highlighted issues that might have led to the military’s prolonged battle with the insurgents.
“This Boko Haram thing is a lot. Then I tell you this, for them to have survived for 16 years and are still fighting, how are they getting their funding? Who’s sustaining them? Because they cannot just be doing it actively just like that.
“What I tell people is- no country should allow this kind of thing to commence. It is a difficult operation to eradicate, extremely difficult.
“Because before now, when we had the conventional kind of warfare, you are fighting a country. You know you’re fighting for territory. You want to achieve something.
“Now you are fighting with people that have nothing to lose. It is an ideology they have in their minds. They believe they are right and you are wrong. He believes if he kills you, he’s getting a blessing. If you kill him, he’s going to heaven. That’s absolutely nothing to lose.
“That makes it very, very difficult, and it’s not written on their foreheads. So, how do you identify who is who?
“And they’ve realized that we obey international laws, they don’t. So what do they do? They use human shields. Anytime they have anything, they go with people, so that you cannot attack them, you cannot shoot, and that’s what makes it so.
“When people say, why is it taking so long? It is a very, very difficult operation to do, because you make the mistake, you kill some people, and your country comes after you. If you don’t kill them [the terrorists], and they continue striving. So, in both ways, you are at the receiving end.
“Because you are wearing a uniform, you can be identified. You are, by law, constitutionally held down on certain things that you must obey. So those are the issues we are facing.
“You know, like I told you, if it was conventional warfare with the equipment, armaments we have now, we’ll go to a community and flatten the entire community where they live. We’ll end this in the very short term, but you can’t do that anymore.”
