Luke Harding


theguardian.com, Thursday 22 January 2015 09.59 GMT

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 Cameroon. The victims of this latest cross-border attack included many children. The Cameroon army subsequently managed to free 20 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 equip 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, made 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, Cameroon 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 were now busy defending their own territory. On Monday a convoy of troops from Chad arrived in Maroua, the main town in Cameroon’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. Cameroon 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 Cameroon. “This is the main reason they intervened,” he said.

The obstacles preventing a regional task force appear insurmountable, observers say. Cameroon 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 control 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 the army 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, the army runs away when Boko Haram advances, he said.

Since 2009 Nigeria’s security forces have waged a brutal 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 for Migration said there was “growing evidence” of turmoil spreading across Nigeria’s frontiers into neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad, in addition to those internally displaced by the fighting.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/nigeria-prospects-defeating-boko-haram-look-bleak

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Even the international community knows that GEJ is a sissy, Nigerians need to stand up and support GMB

Why telling us what we know?
You guys are adding more problem for PDP and TANoids. I won't be surprised if FFK or Okugbe comes out to say Buhari paid UK times to publish this.

Dis UK pepul sef sabi joke ooh, since they won't come down 2 Nigeria come 14th february 2 cast their vote, I will regard it as a phrase(A Mad Man's Talk)..

[size=13pt]He is their mentor.
Buhari and Boko Haram are one.
[/size]

False headline again. APC getting desperate.

BUHARI IS A DREAMER. He will never rule a ONE Nigeria.

I was expecting to see the PDP online warriors to tell us why the UK Guardian got it wrong but instead it has been one insult after the other huh. Wouldnt it be nice to see a change from you guys for once haba.

it's true!! he's the best to end insurgency but not the best to rule and develop the country positively.

he should be posted and made a General
he should be at the forefront of the battle
and not to fight from the high throne.

shadowgwalker:
it's true!! he's the best to end insurgency but not the best to rule and develop the country positively.

he should be posted and made a General
he should be at the forefront of the battle
and not to fight from the high throne.

. . . . . . . . .who is the best to rule and develop? Mr. stealing is not corruption?

Between man and God,Jonathan knows GMB is better equipped to govern Nigeria than him.

Boko Haram would be the least of his achievements. So many things to deal with. And we are trusting God on him.

Goddex:
[size=13pt]He is their mentor.
Buhari and Boko Haram are one.
[/size]

"Buhari is Boko Haram" yet the government of the day cannot arrest and prosecute him?

What a spineless government.

front page ...I will come back to comment

The UK should hire him as their CSO , here in Nigeria,he remains the number suspect concerning book haram . He is currently using boko haram as a campaign strategy

torkaka:


. . . . . . . . . . .I see, was he the one that made the 5000 churches statement

Buzz off dude,I don't discuss politics shallow minds

torkaka:


. . . . . .erm, I think what you meant to say was "buzz off dude, I don't discuss politics [i]with [/i]shallow minds" . . . . . . . . . .your's is not just a shallow mind. . . . . . . . . .your intelligence is rated on the same scale with Goodluck Jonathan . . . . . . . .you are as enlightened as Patience Jonathan . . . . . . . . . . . .to top it, your smartness is in the same league with Sambo

Whatever

Sure... Reverse Engineering what he Pioneered shouldn't be stressful!