The gruesome killing of 30 travellers by Boko Haram last Sunday night in Auno, Borno State, has no doubt added to the myriad of griefs the Nigerian nation has been thrown into lately, especially by dastardly activities of insurgents in the North East, bandits and kidnappers terrorising the highways crisscrossing the country.
As the country was still sobbing over the Auno massacre, over a hundred bandits on Tuesday in Giwa Local Government Area of Kaduna State, stormed Bakali village and burnt 16 members of a family to death! The bandits reportedly locked up all the 16 family members in a room and set it ablaze. In their fit of madness, the bandits also destroyed properties worth hundreds of millions of Naira in the community, before they fled the area.
In Auno, the insurgents, in a deadly nocturnal attack, had stormed the village located some 25 kilometres away from Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, in trucks mounted with heavy artillery weapons, killing, burning, looting and kidnapping women and children.
Many of the fagged out travellers, who were sleeping in their vehicles when the criminals struck, were burnt alive, as the insurgents set the vehicles ablaze. The travellers had stopped for the night, having arrived in the village after the deadline set by the military for vehicles to drive into Maiduguri. But unfortunately, they met their death in the hands of the savage Boko Haram terrorists while sleeping overnight in the town, before continuing their journey the next day.
It is disheartening that the deadly attack by the insurgents on defenceless travellers, who were even asleep when they struck, came as President Muhammadu Buhari was assuring the international community in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, of his government’s resolve to set free children and others abducted by the insurgents and still in the captivity of the Boko Haram.
According to reports, Auno is an area where fighters of the Islamic State West Africa Province have, in recent months, been on the rampage, ambushing and killing members of the security forces and civilians.
In January, no fewer than four Nigerian soldiers were killed and seven others injured when the ISWAP fighters attacked troops stationed in Auno.
ISWAP fighters, it was learnt, have consistently targeted that stretch of the Maiduguri highway lately.
This surge in the murderous activities of the insurgents followed the creation of “super camps” by the Nigerian military in the North East – a strategy under which small Army camps have withdrawn from several areas and coalesced into fewer, larger bases.
But the tactical withdrawal of the military from the volatile area has left residents and people travelling through the area susceptible and vulnerable.
Infact, the relocation of the military camp from Auno has given a fillip to the activities of the insurgents in the area, as they now operate without any let or hindrance. This decision of the military, which is grossly deficient and lacking in strategy, actually resulted in the massacre of innocent travellers that was witnessed in the village last Sunday night.
Nigerians are increasingly growing apprehensive about the perennial war with the insurgents in the North East, prowling kidnappers and bandits in the North West and elsewhere in the country, and they want answers to the myriad of questions agitating their minds about the manifest inability of both the Federal Government and the nation’s security architecture to effectively address the worsening insecurity threatening the nation’s existence. How many more precious lives of innocent Nigerians do we have to lose before we rein in the madness of the Boko Haram insurgents? Or is it that the insurgents have become more powerful than the Nigerian Armed Forces and other security forces?
Nigerians continue to wonder when the “technically defeated” insurgents, according to President Buhari, will be physically decapitated and decimated.
The gruesome killing of the more than 30 defenceless commuters in Auno by insurgents and the heartless massacre of 16 members of a family in Bakali underscore the low rating of the current administration in the fight against terrorism.
Nigerians have had enough of the asinine excuses made almost on a daily basis by the government and the service chiefs for their inability to rein in the rampaging insurgents, kidnappers and bandits.
The military should strive to sever the supply chain for food, ammunition and recruitment to the Boko Haram insurgents. This is a very effective means of speedily turning the tide of the battle against them. The calls by Nigerians for the replacement of the current service chiefs should be given a fresh consideration by President Buhari. Nigerians did not vote for insecurity!
It is also imperative for the government to do more to arrest the slide by Nigeria into a failed state, going by the worsening insecurity caused by the Boko Haram insurgents, kidnappers abducting innocent citizens for ransom and bandits, by changing its security tactics and redoubling its efforts to permanently end insurgency in the North East and threats posed to security of lives and property in other parts of the country by kidnappers and bandits.
With the worsening insecurity in the country and in line with the requests of ordinary Nigerians, it won’t be out of place if the Federal Government declares a state of emergency in the nation’s security sector now.
Although President Buhari has got surprisingly more nonplussed as he continues to wonder that Boko Haram has become a more ferocious beast, Nigerians can longer be patient with a leadership that has failed to protect their lives and property but quick at churning out condolence messages to commiserate with families of those hapless citizens who fall victims to insurgents, kidnappers and bandits. The President can always do better combating these threats to the lives of Nigerians than merely waiting to pay condolence visits to victims’ families.
