THE MILITARY AND AMBUSH KILLINGS

Security agencies should do more to ensure such attacks are curtailed

While we commend our military for the critical role they have been playing in the fight against insurgency/banditry in the North and for making sacrifices on behalf of the nation, it is also important for them to interrogate the ease with which their personnel are ambushed and killed by these criminals. In the first week of the year in Zamfara State, five soldiers and one police officer were killed, following an ambush. Last week, the Army was reported to have recovered the bodies of eight military personnel, including a commanding officer with the rank of a Major who were kill by Boko Haram insurgents in the Damasak area of Borno State. We commiserate with the families of the fallen heroes.

Since taking out Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, insurgents from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have engaged the military in serious confrontations and they are notorious for ambushes. About five years ago, they ambushed and killed the commander of the 28 Task Force in Chibok, Brigadier General Dzarma Zirkusu in Bulguma, Askira Uba Local Government Area of Borno State. If gunmen could so cynically ambush our troops to kill, it is very telling of the boldness they have mustered to thumb their noses at authority. That this has become a pattern is why the military high command should be concerned.

In one such attack in March 2020, about 70 soldiers were killed when terrorists fired rocket-propelled grenades at a lorry load of soldiers at Gorgi village in Borno State. Shortly after, dozens of people, including soldiers, mobile policemen and civilians were killed in Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State by terrorists who wiped out a military platoon. In July last 2022, Captain Attah Samuel and four other soldiers, were killed when terrorists ambushed the Guards Battalion during a patrol in Bwari area of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT).

The list of soldiers killed after being ambushed by bandits or insurgents is long. Yet, we do not need to enlist in the security agencies to realise the efficacy of pre-emptive and preventive intelligence in the situation we have found ourselves. In fact, any combat operations in such an environment of volatility, and complexity as we have in states like Borno and Niger must be intelligence driven. But that would entail cooperation from the civil populace by volunteering information to the military. We understand that in many of the communities, the bandits are known and are sometimes shielded from the law.

Authorities in the country must accept that the insecurity we confront is no longer a series of random and opportunistic attacks. There is now a strategic selection of targets, well-coordinated attacks as well as careful map reading by terrorists and bandits. In the pattern of these attacks, their timing and precision, there is need to interrogate the issue of possible sabotage and failure of intelligence. Besides, we must be resolute in our approach to dealing with the challenge. The idea of dialogue as a non-kinetic option of dealing with bandits being pursued by some northern governors should be discouraged.

Meanwhile, the violence that defines this season in Nigeria speaks to a national psychology that has devalued human life to the lowest level. From North to South and East, hundreds of people are being killed almost daily either by criminal cartels or lone wolves who seem to have overpowered the capacity of the state. But the situation becomes more worrisome when criminals target our military personnel for extermination. The time has come to realise the severity of the threat to our national security by reassessing the current strategies.