Boom Haram BH is a terrorist organisation fronting as a jihadist group. They have no principe or grievance for which they are fighting the Nigerian state. They have grown from strength to strength due in part to a variety of reasons. The ground work for their being was the use of religion by short sighted politicians in our third republic. They implemented half barked sharia laws in Northern Nigeria. They burnt books and closed social centres forgetting that Northern Nigeria is not a country but part of a federation. All of these while they neglected their people's welfare. They then went further to co-op militants who wanted to be their provisional arm enforcing sharia. They soon became disillusioned with their political masters who were in fact worse then they had feared. These politicians were thieves who were only interested in themselves. Hence the movement of BH. Their growth also depended on the ambition of politicians who wanted power in the centre and were content for the country to burn to prove they were indispensable for the governance of the state. Our neighbouring countries were also into it. Niger and Cameroon provided succor for BH to store arms and maintain logistics for their war against Nigeria.
The biggest benefactor has been the Nigerian state. The current government have a written the book on how not to deal terrorists in the manner and actions they have taken to dealing with this matter.
We have a President who ought to a mere local council member and by stroke of luck, without ambition and ability risen to the highest position in the country. Corruption has like cancer premeditated all spheres of our lives including the military. The effect is a demoralised, ill equiped and badly led armed forces.
The failure to galvanise the people, empathise with the direct victims of this war has caused us to lose the battles with BH. The government is shortsighted, befret of ideas on how to fight this war. When the Chiboke girls were taken, the government did not act because it was busy calculating the political motives of the news save for social media who made it a global matter, our own government could not have cared less. In all of the bomb blasts in Northern Nigeria, the president has not been there to cry with the people rather his office issues bland statements. The opposition are also busy giving sucoor to BH by scapegoating and point scoring.
The military has failed to deploy in sufficient troops to deal with the terrorists. Half of the military is used as personal protection service for our political and military elites and for political actions for example during the recent Ekiti governorship election, they had enough soldiers to lock down the state. The government has singularly failed to put the country on a war footing. They have failed to seal the Northern boundaries and the states most affected to flush out these terrorists. They have failed to expose sponsors of BH and deal with them. They have failed to enact an enabling terrorists laws to deal with support and material support for terrorism. They have failed to make countries where suspected terrorists operate from pay by laying waste these countries. They have failed to learn from Israel or our own civil war.
All retired army personnels should be recalled and any money stolen from our security budget dealt with as treason and punished with death. Mobilise the country for the war and declare a state of emergency in the affected states. There should be a general war tax to properly fund the war. Hire mercenaries if required to lead if our officers are without abilities and knowledge executing a secure and clear strategy of flushing out terrorists. All petrol stations monitored or only used for the war effort. Let the terrorist trek and not in vehicles powered with our petrol.
Finally decouple religion from the State. Establish a Marshall plan to create the environment for development in Northern Nigeria. Education must be a central point of any plan. The people of Northern Nigeria have been ill served by all the alleged leaders they have produced todate.
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