Our war, their warships

Aliyu Musa

At a press briefing recently, the Director Army Public Relations, Brig-General Olajide Laleye, claimed the ongoing military trial of some soldiers and officers of the Nigerian Army has been necessitated by the need to enforce discipline in the armed forces and improve their likelihood of defeating the Boko Haram insurgency.

This is no doubt an important step, which if it had been taken in good faith, would be described as a hard but inevitable choice. It would have been welcomed by most Nigerians. But it clearly is not because it is a case of quickly treating the symptoms of a disease while leaving the root causes to continue to fertilise.

Every serious observer or analyst of the ongoing conflict knew, given the strategy dogmatically adopted from the outset up until now, that it was only a matter of time before the military got to this point, where it would be desperately offering some of its own as sacrifice to some demigods. And that is why in each case before a court marshal a conviction was always obtained by skimming the surface.

In a piece in September 2014, following the death sentence handed 12 soldiers, I argued that inasmuch as the military authority claims it is doing this to restore discipline, it must also accept responsibility for the breakdown of discipline by not playing its role appropriately. We have seen soldiers, perhaps already too tired of grumbling within the barracks and among their peers, taking the unprecedented step of bringing their plight to the awareness of the world through the media. Many of them, albeit anonymously, have granted interviews or written letters to local and international media highlighting their plight. But because we are in a regime that turns deaf ears and blind eyes to emergencies, all their claims have simply passed unnoticed.

Our soldiers are tested and trusted but they are also human, so they also give in to frustration if pushed too far. You cannot expect a soldier, even though he signed up to die if the need arises, to simply accept to commit suicide needlessly just as they are made to do when sent to fight Boko Haram insurgents barely armed.

The main allegation against a group of 54 soldiers condemned to death earlier in the month, for example, was cowardice; that they cowardly retreated rather than face the enemy. But the soldiers countered that theirs was a company of less than two dozens and ill equipped to fight an enemy army of more than 200 fully armed with sophisticated weapons. In passing judgement the court marshal ignored the soldiers’ complaint even though it was genuine and that the problems they complained about were deliberately created by greedy superiors and their civilian cohorts. So, with unprecedented alacrity, the court marshal condemned the soldiers to death.

Contrast the above to the manner in which captured insurgents’ trial drags or seldom happens, one is shockingly left asking what the regime hopes to achieve by decimating its own military.

Apart from Kabiru Sokoto, the mastermind of the Madalla Christmas day Church bombing, and Ali Sanda Umar Konduga, the self-confessed Boko Haram spokesman, both of whom were let off with a slap on the wrist, not many convictions have been obtained against leaders and members of the terror group in the custody of the Nigerian security.

I certainly don’t buy such arguments by conspiracy theorists that the government is calculatingly weakening the military and arming rebels, including those in the Niger Delta, to speed up the process of the country’s disintegration. But who will blame them given all that is happening? The insurgents have, since August, annexed parts of the country comfortably but the government endlessly brags about turning the heat on them. Meanwhile, soldiers are handed death sentences instead of weapons while ‘born again’ rebels like Government Tompolo and Asari Dokubo are assisted to acquire warships and military helicopters. Who then will blame conspiracy theorists?

Zahara’u Babangida’s ordeal

It’s totally unbelievable and absolutely baffling that any parent would be so absurd and even heartless to sell off their child to merchants of death. But Zahara’u Babangida’s story is no fiction. It is the account of a 13-year-old failed bomber recently apprehended in Kano after her conscience had dissuaded her from running an errand of death, on behalf of Boko Haram. Paraded by the police in Kano, Zahara’u told of how her father, a very mean man, had taken her to the insurgents’ camp from where, after undergoing series of brainwash and rehearsals, she was despatched alongside two others females in the company of male minders to Kano to carry out mass murder. Her protest had fallen on deaf ears and she was threatened with death so she agreed. But at the last minute, even as a co-suicide bomber urged her to carry on, she pulled out and was later apprehended. But she is now in the custody of police and would be made to face the law. I have listened to her testimony with rapt attention and concluded that her story is totally believable. But what I have also come to a conclusion on is that Zahara’u is one of many child victims of the insurgency that are conscripted, abused and despatched to die as suicide bombers or killed by the military. In her case, however, she is alive and has told her story. Methinks she needs to be treated as a victim and not a criminal.