Nigeria’s current military strategy for defeating Boko Horam is unlikely to succeed, analysts have warned, with the international community largely powerless to defeat the increasingly rampant Islamist group.

Corruption inside the Nigerian army, unpaid wages and mutinies among troops have all facilitated Boko Haram’s rise, they said. On Sunday, the sect, which has killed thousands in its bid to carve out an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, kidnapped about 80 people in neighbouring Cameroun. The victims of this latest cross-border attack included many children.
The Cameroun army subsequently managed to free 24 of the hostages.

Dr. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos, an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Africa programme, said Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, had been manifestly unable to halt Boko Haram’s advance. The opposition leader, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, who is seeking to unseat Jonathan in the election on 14 February, may be better able to overhaul the country’s dysfunctional military, he suggested.

“The best hope (of defeating Boko Haram) would be the elections. For me the problem is in Nigeria. The answer is in Nigeria.” He added: “I’m confident that so long as President Jonathan is in charge there isn’t much that can be done. He isn’t in control of the military leadership. And the leadership doesn’t control the soldiers on the ground.”

Others, however, were sceptical that the elections would bring about change, predicting instead that they would further polarise divisions between a largely Muslim north and Christian south. Buhari, a Muslim, draws most of his support from Nigeria’s northern provinces, where Boko Haram is active. The group rejects the idea of a secular state. It has promised to disrupt the polls.

“Nigerian politics is a violent and dangerous game. Gangs of thugs are hired to intimidate rivals,” Martin Roberts, senior Africa analyst at IHS Global Insight, said. Roberts predicted that neither side would concede defeat, with suspicion in the north that Jonathan was deliberately allowing Boko Haram to flourish in an attempt to disenfranchise Buhari’s supporters.

Montclos, meanwhile, said there was relatively little the international community could do, following several well-meaning but doomed attempts to boost the Nigerian military.

The US offered surveillance and intelligence help after Boko Haram kidnapped 279 schoolgirls last April during a raid in Chibok, deep in north-eastern Nigeria, sparking global outrage. But an American plan to train a new Nigerian battalion ended last month in an acrimonious squabble between Washington and Abuja.

Nigerian commanders insisted that the US supply them with attack helicopters and fighter jets to wipe out Boko Haram, something that the White House was unwilling to do, given the army’s poor human rights record. The Nigerian government then abruptly terminated the final phase of the programme. Successive central governments have also deliberately hollowed out the army because of a pervasive fear it could stage a coup.

Tensions between Nigeria and its neighbours, meanwhile, make the prospect of a regional peacekeeping operation fraught.

At a summit last May, the French president, François Hollande, announced a new regional force, comprising troops from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroun and the Republic of Niger. Each country was meant to supply 700 troops.

But by November, the force had failed to materialise. Ghana’s president, John Mahama, who currently heads the West African ECOWAS bloc, last week said that an army to fight Boko Haram could be created under African Union auspices. “It’s pie in the sky. It isn’t going to happen,” Roberts predicted.

With Boko Haram staging a series of audacious cross-border raids, Nigeria’s neighbours are now busy defending their own territories. On Monday a convoy of troops from Chad arrived in Maroua, the main town in Cameroun’s far north.

The Chadian army – which helped French forces drive out al-Qaida-linked jihadis from northern Mali in 2013 – has deployed around 2,000 soldiers. Cameroun has also sent thousands of additional troops to its border with Nigeria.

According to Montclos, Chad’s chief goal is to protect its economic interests. Much of Chad’s oil is exported via northern Cameroun. “This is the main reason they intervened,” he said.

The obstacles preventing a regional task force appear insurmountable, observers say. Cameroun and Nigeria have difficult relations.

Niger – a stable, smaller state, with a relatively disciplined army – has found it impossible to coordinate actions against Boko Haram with its Nigerian counterpart.

“Military officers from the Republic of Niger complain that when they call the Nigerian army nobody picks up. What kind of regional cooperation are we talking about?” Montclos asked.

His recent Chatham House report argues that Boko Haram, which has taken large swaths of Borno State in Nigeria’s north-east, is adept at exploiting the state’s chronic institutional weaknesses.

It knows the local terrain well, can navigate around a demoralised and deficient security presence, and is able to attack villages with total impunity. Government troops on the ground suffer from low morale. Local vigilante forces have been unable to stave off violent Boko Haram operations.

On 3 January, Boko Haram launched a bloody assault on the towns of Baga and Doron, killing hundreds and razing the area to the ground. Roberts said that Chadian troops had withdrawn ahead of the raid, after being told the Nigerian air force was about to bomb the rebels. But the plane never arrived. Typically, Nigerian troops run away when Boko Haram advances, he said.
Since 2009, Nigeria’s security forces have waged an anti-insurgency campaign, characterised by massacres, extra-judicial killings and arrests without trial.

This onslaught has alienated many civilians and driven communities into the arms of Boko Haram. This repression has driven recruitment, with Boko Haram expanding from an estimated 4,000 members in 2009 to 6,000-8,000 in 2014.

A new report on Tuesday said that the rapidly escalating insurgency had forced a million people to flee their homes. The International Organisation of Migration said there was “growing evidence” of turmoil spreading across Nigeria’s frontiers into neighbouring Cameroun, Niger and Chad, in addition to those internally displaced by the fighting.

• Culled from The Guardian of London

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/nigeria-s-prospects-of-defeating-boko-haram-look-bleak/199918/

What makes nigerians even think gej can curb boko haram? Gej can not even settle family problem..

Why can't the north divide and make Buhari their president to curb boko haram?

hmmm

These are the sort of issue-based realities and submissions that Nigerians should focus on in making their electoral choices. Vote for GEJ and , as now confirmed again, you are certainly voting for death and worsened terror as Nigeria descends further into greater chaos on the way to becoming Somalia or Iraq. Or you can vote GMB and get change from a terrible status quo. It is simply the time to put sentiments aside and do the right thing. Nigeria made a terrible mistake with GEJ and it is time to correct that mistake.

“The best hope (of defeating Boko Haram) would be the elections. For me the problem is in Nigeria. The answer is in Nigeria.” He added: “I’m confident that so long as President Jonathan is in charge there isn’t much that can be done. He isn’t in control of the military leadership. And the leadership doesn’t control the soldiers on the ground.”

.

My people perish for lack of knowledge and. The ability to face the truth.

If things don't change for good now then I have a lot of work to do when I become president

LRNZH:


Everyone should know this by now.

Tribalism has overriden some people's sense of judgement and perception.

Indeed. How can some people want Nigeria to continue as things stand? The world was repulsed at how 2000 Nigerians were butchered recently but they could not be bothered to grieve for us after seeing how our government abandoned the Chibok girls in confirmation of how Nigeria is led by callous crooks who care very little for the lives and safety of their citizens. You are totally right to mention tribalism as a core issue because Jonathan, a terrible example of a very sectional and tribalistic President, would not be so comfortable watching so many die in the North if he cares about every Nigerian life. Rather GEJ goes everywhere to set Nigerian ethnic groups against themselves so he can win in the most crude show of the detrimental use of 'divide and conquer' politics.

Jonathan, if not a tribalistic and petty-minded individual unfit to lead, would not sanction his minions to come out and announce that every issue is the work of "enemies" wanting to discredit the GEJ government. "Chibok kidnapping is a scam" nailed the coffin of GEJ home and abroad. The world stood with France that lost under 20 individuals to terror yet ignored Nigeria that lost around 2000 to the same problem in the same week. The entire world carried #bringourgirlsback# placards for Nigeria but gave up on us when they realised that the Nigerian government does not even care about the Chibok girls and the situation in the North. How the world treated Nigeria over the Baga Boko Haram massacre speaks volumes to sensible Nigerians who must now see what our country has become under GEJ and understand what we must do to rescue our nation from failing totally.