Shortly before President Goodluck Jonathan’s government announced the postponement of the general elections initially scheduled for February 14, there were speculations the elections might not hold altogether, or that at best it would be postponed perhaps indefinitely. Eventually, when the postponement came through a tangled skein of announcement that jostled back and forth between a reluctant Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and an eager Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh, it was for six weeks in the first instance. Nigerians were deeply sceptical. In fact, the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) believed the postponement was a breather to afford the dispirited and frantic Dr Jonathan the opportunity to arrest the momentum triggered by the APC candidate at the time, Muhammadu Buhari, and stave off what was thought to be the president’s anticipated defeat.
But a stonefaced Air Chief Marshall Badeh told the public that the military needed six weeks to neutralise Boko Haram and make the elections safe and credible. Analysts had wondered why the government seemed very sure that Boko Haram, which could not be defeated or neutralised in more than three years, could suddenly be degraded sufficiently in six weeks to enable a smooth election. A few short weeks ago, the jigsaw seemed to have fallen into place. The missing piece was apparently supplied by South African mercenaries who had been retained by the Jonathan government to fight Nigeria’s war. But despite the rather very public knowledge of the role the mercenaries are playing in the Boko Haram war, the Nigerian authorities are still prickly about the subject.
So far, both the military and the government have refused to confirm stories of the role the mercenaries are playing. Those who suggested that mercenaries were fighting the war for Nigeria, including the sceptical and critical Nigerian media, were tagged unpatriotic and disloyal. A German radio reporter, Musa Ubale, who publicly posed the question of the mercenaries to visiting Chadian President Idriss Deby last Monday was disaccredited from covering State House activities and expelled. President Deby of course deflected the question very cleverly, but Nigeria was not so clever in handling the embarrassing matter with as much delicateness as the troublesome subject demanded.
And just about the same time the Jonathan government was taking umbrage at media questions on the mercenaries, the leader of the mercenaries in question, Eeben Barlow, formerly of the South African Defence Force, but now retired, was addressing the Royal Danish Defence College on how he had led his band of about 100 mercenaries to degrade Boko Haram as a fighting force. Now 62 years old, the colonel explained that as bush war experts, age was not a disadvantage. In detail, he carefully led his audience through tactics and logistics he and his men, some of them veterans of special forces units, deployed against the band of ragtag Boko Haram insurgents. He was careful to suggest that Nigerian soldiers were demoralised and disorganised.
Why Nigeria is still denying the role of the mercenaries in turning the tide against Boko Haram is unclear. However, the news of the mercenaries as a factor in the counterinsurgency operations in the Northeast is everywhere in the media, local and foreign. Col Barlow has seemed to make the job easier for Nigeria by identifying where the problem with the Nigerian military lies. According to him, the Nigerian military is demoralised and disorganised. These problems had been identified even by Nigerian soldiers in the early part of the war. But rather than face these issues squarely, rather than address the complaints of deserters and mutinous troops, the military brass preferred to fling the law and military rule books in the faces of deserters, some of whom have been, or are being, tried for mutiny.
Consequently, the problem with the Nigerian military has refused to abate. In a move that is clearly image-damaging, if not outrightly treasonable, the Jonathan government opted to recruit mercenaries without legislative backing, paid them well — by some account nearly $500 per day — and engaged in frenzied procurement of weapons through extra-budgetary processes. This clearly indefensible financial haemorrhaging will have to be investigated painstakingly, in addition to setting up a board of inquiry to examine what went wrong over the years with the Nigerian military. The Jonathan government was not responsible for the birth of Boko Haram, a fact it keeps stressing, but it was astonishingly remiss in tackling it, even allowing the menace to fester badly and dangerously. And to worsen its laxity and complicity, it has done everything wrong in fighting the insurgency.
More embarrassingly, last week, Boko Haram insurgents once again threatened Maiduguri’s suburbs. In fact, to cap a bad week for Nigerian arms, the insurgents were reported to have retaken the northern Borno town of Marte. The beleaguered town has oscillated between Nigerian and rebel control more than thrice since the Boko Haram war began. After learning of what befell Marte, displaced Nigerians planning to return to their liberated towns will think twice before committing such a rash action. They will be unsure whether the military actually has a holistic strategy to defeat Boko Haram and keep recaptured territories safe and secure. Or they will wonder whether the insurgents are not being emboldened by a supposed fracture in relations between Nigeria and its mercenaries. Given the government’s reticence in the war so far, few explanations are expected to be offered to help citizens make sense of the yo-yo between federal troops and insurgents.
It was wrong and embarrassing for the Jonathan government to be so precipitate in tackling the German radio reporter’s question. It suggests the government had something to hide. But no matter how many reporters are expelled, the Nigerian military will still have to address the question of how the war is being fought, and what, if any, are the roles being played by South African mercenaries. They must also grapple with the image problem and ethical crisis such a big and supposedly powerful country like Nigeria is having by recruiting mercenaries to fight a war weaker and less endowed neighbouring countries like Chad consider a cakewalk. Chad has a military strength of about 30,000 men in a population of a little over 10 million. Nigeria has a troop strength of about 200,000 in a population of about 170 million, and about 300,000 paramilitary personnel. Less than 10,000 men were needed to wage the war against Boko Haram militants numbering less than eight thousand men, but Nigeria failed to muster this number for reasons only Dr Jonathan’s government can explain. Worse for Nigeria, Col Barlow’s mercenaries were not more than 100, before whom Boko Haram fighters have fled. Clearly, too many things have gone wrong.
The president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari, himself a retired army general and former head of state, has reassured the country he would prioritise the Boko Haram war and knock the menace into a cocked hat. He has promised to find out what went wrong with Nigeria’s once proud military, and find and quickly administer the necessary remedies. He will find his countrymen backing him to carry out the rebuilding required to restore Nigeria’s fighting image. There will be no quick fix as he has warned, nor are Nigerians expecting facile solutions. Let Gen Buhari proceed with the firm caution and determined and calculated deliberateness needed to give Nigeria a rebirth in every broken area of national life, starting with the military. The country has been thoroughly disgraced by the recruitment of mercenaries, especially white, former apartheid soldiers, many of them old enough to father a good number of Nigerian soldiers who have proved unwilling or unable to fight.
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