Yuletide concerns for soldiers in the heartland of terror

A lone Nigeria soldier on duty in one of the recently recaptured territories
(Photo  by Blogger)

By Abdulkareem Haruna
(LEADERSHIP NEWSPAPER - January 2nd, 2016) 

Sergeant Uche (not his full name) has only five hours off his working time to catch some sleep: and that is like everyday routine. 
In the last six months, he spends most of his days either on sentry or on patrol duty looking out for Boko Haram terrorists.

He wakes every morning to a new day of challenge. 
As he bent down to fasten the lace of his boots, and getting set to join his company for yet another patrol duty, his mind flashed back to the incident of the previous day.
It was indeed a bloody and close shave encounter with death for him when his unit came in contact with desperate diehards called Boko Haram. But for the extra-vigilance of his colleague, the ambushing suicide bomber would have consumed them all. 

He still could recall how the car-suicide-bomber suddenly appeared from behind some thick shrubs, driving a bomb laden Volkswagen Golf car, at a neck breaking speed, and heading towards the soldiers who were moving in a patrol van. It would have turned out to be a major massacre: but Mike, a Lance Corporal was swift in his reflex.

The young soldier simply aimed, calmly, and pulled the trigger. The oncoming car suddenly swerved, skidding off its course and hit a tree creating a thick trail of dust. The dead driver, a craggy looking, disheveled man, in his mid twenties, was hit right on the forehead.
Checking the demobilized bomb-loaded car, soldiers recovered five massive IEDs made of mini cooking gas cylinder, all linked by tiny strings of wires. A tiny remote control device was also found on the front passenger seat.
But that was not Sergeant Uche's first time of coming closer to death.

In August, at somewhere close to the Nigerien border in the northern Borno, Uche's unit suffered yet another ambush attack by Boko Haram.

It was dusk, and they had to return to their base near Damasak after a day of successful raid and clearing of Boko Haram camps. As their patrol vans meandered through the bush, they came into an ambush: Boko Haram fighters, armed with RPGs and AA rifles, opened fire on them. It was messy. Many soldiers died, even as those on the rear vehicle were able to put themselves in form and tackled their attackers. Sergeant Uche was amongst the lucky ones to remain alive to count the number of insurgents killed. Over 30 were killed.

Back to the present.

Uche was done with his shoe laces. He looked up and smiled at one of his colleagues that was dancing to a piece of music blasting from the MP3 of his mobile phone device – that was the best the phone could offer in a location where there is no telephone service.
"What date is it today?" Uche asked the dancing soldier. 

"Don't tell me you don finish your salary...it is just 12th day of the month...?", the dancing soldier asked. "Abi you don dey miss your wife (or have you been missing your wife)?
"No. I am just counting down to Christmas, and the thought of my family celebrating without me is really torturing", said Mike. 

"Christmas? Oga (boss) you better not think about it at all. Remember, we have till the end of this month to finish this Boko criminals or be damned", the dancing soldier, who goes by the name Ade, said. 

"Yes o!!! Lafiya Dole", they both retorted in the usual spirited soldier excitement, as they jogged off to join other colleagues for yet another patrol. 

The two soldiers - like hundred other gallant troops - have long resolved to sacrifice their lives and pleasure to make sure millions of other Nigerians sleep peacefully and even enjoy a violence free Yuletide. 

It is no longer news that many soldiers currently in the frontline have been away from their families for more than eight months now: and many of them are not due to return home even in the next months coming. 

Rather than stimulating their morale with praises and patriotic words of encouragements, many Nigerians are ready to lampoon the soldiers should they fail to wipe out Boko Haram by the end of this December as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Even though the military leaders have repeatedly chorused that the presidential December deadline "remains sacrosanct", anyone who has followed the trend of Boko Haram's insurgency and the grounds they have covered in their wild and senseless violence, would not go on self-deceit that every bit of the insurgents would be wiped out completely within a given time frame. 

Experts on guerilla warfare have established that no army can win a war where insurgents deploy guerilla tactics as their module of belligerent engagement. It is more difficult when soldiers have to fight enemies who see the path to paradise through the nozzle of a soldier's rifle.

Colonel John Adache (rtd) said in a TV programme recently that "President Muhammadu Buhari, a former soldier gave a professional instruction to the military: But Nigerians we have different kinds of victory – which can be tactical victory, total victory, victory by way reducing the belligerence capacity of the enemy etc..."

How does one beat a situation where a lone soldier manning a security checkpoint near a crowded commercial area in Bama or Mobbar town of Borno state, would be able to sniff out a Boko Haram fighter from amidst the stream of human beings milling around him. What happens if his duty post came under attack and he could not shoot because the attacker is not in anyway different from every other persons scrambling to safety? 

Yet this soldier still has to brave up to protect the folks amongst whom, he is very sure, his enemies are lurking for the best time to strike.

The Nigerian soldiers often come back home with laureates for gallantry after participating foreign peace keeping missions, only to be subjected to ridicule in the hands of some low-level insurgents; because someone, some how, had refused to deploy the resources meant to buy guns for troops, to the purpose intended.

While we continue to condemn and castigate the soldiers for not quelling Boko Haram in four years, no one recognizes the sacrifices of the commander that would rather call for the air bombardment of his base, with himself and his troops inside, just to prevent the advancing Boko Haram insurgents who were advancing in their thousands – from having access to cache of munitions in his armory.

Many of us may have long forgotten the gallantry of Lieutenant Colonel Abu Ali who had to drive his war tank through a firewall of suicide bombers to save his colleagues from slaughter in the hands of over 500 advancing Boko Haram fighters. More than 200 insurgents dropped under the wheel of his armored vessel, even though his eardrums could not survive the quaking sound of the multiple blasts. He had to be flown abroad to fix his ears.

While we may subject the military to some form of parody over the already assumed 'failure' to wipe off the last potential suicide bomber by December 31, Nigerians must not forget very quickly, the hundreds of women that have been turned widows and children made fatherless because their husbands and fathers, could not return home from the battle front. 

Of course, every soldier had signed to die or live defending this dear country of ours, but we must not forget that many soldiers that fell in this ongoing insurgency would probably have been alive today had those entrusted with funds to buy guns for them placed the national interest high and above their greed for lucre. 

Two weeks ago, the Nigeria Army headquarters announced a subtle reprieve that eventually came the way of the 71 condemned soldiers who got a 10 years jail time instead of the death-by-firing-squad sentence they got last year over established cases of mutiny.

Wrong as it may be for a soldier to raise arms against his principal officer, or to turn his back against a command to advance, many Nigerians, including some top army generals who insisted that the 71 mutineers must hang may have it in their sub consciousness that the former condemned soldiers deserve some sympathy.

Had those soldiers not gotten their condemnation commuted to ten years imprisonment, their death would have turned out to be a paradox of the first grade. It would have belittled the eminence of common sense to say that soldiers, who had hinged their reasons for mutiny on lack of requisite munitions, are to take the bullet while politicians that were saddled with the job of buying them the guns are accusing one another of pocketing the billions of naira meant for that purpose. 

But thank God the death sentence was commuted to time behind the bars. At least, even in jail, the ex-soldiers would still have a feel of the Yuletide  - thanks to the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General  Tukur Buratai, who promised a review of the death sentence passed on the mutineer soldiers and ensured that it comes to pass.

This piece does not, in anyway, doubt the capability of the Nigerian armed forces to end the Boko Haram insurgency by the end of this year, even though it is universally affirmed that terrorism can't be ended in a single battle. But this thought process  strongly doubts if many Nigerians would even remember that hundreds of  widows of soldiers' had celebrated the last Christmas, and the New Year for the first or repeated  time without their husbands.

For Sergeant Uche, his Christmas wishes to his beloved wife and children would be received the next time the driver conveying logistics to troops at the frontline took his phone 178km away from the battle field, to where mobile telecom signal are available: and a "Daddy we miss you, happy Charismas; stay safe" reply, would be received on the phone for him to read later when the truck eventually returns to the frontline. 

But certainly, no one (many Nigerians) had remembered to send a  Yuletide wish to the soldiers in the frontline.