By Bomba Dauda
The Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Gwabin Musa, is tactful. He has wheeled a profound political will to end the menace of the multi-headed hydra: insurgency. He has opened up a potentially lucrative frontier in the fight against insurgency. Deploying both military and non-kinetic approaches and the military under his watch is revered for being defensively offensive against terrorists.
His militarised tactics are yielding positive results and are definitely an upgrade of the knee-jerk approach of the previous administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Who would have thought that the President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Alhaji Bello Bodejo, could be arrested over the creation of a vigilante group in Nasarawa State, which is akin to running a state within a state. The military under the current CDS, operational successes are, in part, based on doctrinal shifts. This is crystal clear in the outcomes of military interventions in the frontline.
The Nigerian Army’s unwavering determination, superior firepower, and ground-breaking achievements in the war against the insurgents are gradually calming nerves and dousing tension. Though, not yet uhuru, but even the most frivolous analysts can’t refute the fact that huge successes have been recorded in epic proportions.
For about two decades, the nation has been in a sour mood. Tension has flared up, and it has reached feverish pitch over terrorist activities. The media in the country is bizarrely awash with bloodletting and gory tales. Many communities have been wiped out. Some are surviving at the edge while others have their prosperity, especially agro- economy, taken aback.
Those who survived the vile attacks by rogues operating either under an ideological template or criminal mindset, are rebuilding their shattered lives from the rubble and ashes of the conflagration that engulfed their communities, which were set ablaze by the enemies of the state.
The southern region of the country is contending with kidnapping and oil theft. Some communities in the Northeast, Northwest, and the Middle Belt region of the country have been under the sway of Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Boko Haram, kidnappers, cattle rustlers and bandits. These regions have swaths of radical elements that their leaders have been operating under multiple aliases.
Recently, the Defence Headquarters in Abuja reeled out the names of terrorist commanders killed by troops of the Nigerian Army.
According to the Defence Headquarters, the terrorist commanders killed by troops include the Head of Is-Al Furqan Province (ISGS and ISWAP), Abu Bilal Minuki, also known as Abubakar Mainok; Haruna Isiya Boderi, a notorious terrorist who operated along Birnin Gwari Forest in Kaduna State as well as the Abuja Kaduna Highway.
Also, Kachallah Damina was killed alongside over 50 combatants on March 24. DHQ listed other terrorist leaders killed as Kachallah Alhaji Dayi, Kachallah Idi, alias Namaidaro; Kachallah Kabiru, alias Doka; Kachallah Azarailu, alias Farin-Ruwa; Kachallah Balejo; Ubangida, Alhaji Baldu, etc.
Killing terrorists kingpins and sponsors are relative to de-mobilizing the hordes of followers and nipping the reins of terrorism. Relatively, the killing of Osama Bin Laden in 2011 in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by the United States Navy SEAL Team-6 depleted Al- Qaeda because Bin Laden was both the financier and the leader of the Islamic terrorist group. As it is now, Al-Qaeda has been reduced to a scarecrow after the killing of their most powerful figure.
In Afghanistan, the US Marine overran the Taliban, toppled its government in 2021 and instituted an interim administration led by its chairman, Hamid Karzai because the anti-Taliban fighters backed by the US government ostracized the Taliban by killing some of its renowned Taliban ferocious warlords and paved way for the US ground troops to invade and subsequently topple the taliban government.
The criminal world is an ever- changing terrain and its complexities are multidimensional, but their network automatically becomes moribund when their circuit is broken. Targeting the leaders of the belligerent fighters in Nigeria, just as the Nigerian Army is doing under the current leadership of the CDS, is strategically coherent in de-energising the swath of recruited terrorists.
The improvement in the security situation of the country is retooling and oiling the wheels of internal social dynamics. Before the relative peace being enjoyed, many ethnic tribes in Northern Nigeria suspended their cultural day celebrations as a result of an upsurge in insecurity.