There was fiasco in the sleepy community of Dapchi, Bursari Local Government Area of Yobe State in the evening of Monday, February 20, 2018, as the community’s all-girls school -Government Girls Technical Science Secondary School – was overrun by suspected Boko Haram insurgents.
The militants reportedly invaded the town in 18 gun-trucks and headed straight to the school, where they shot indiscriminately before making for the hostels to capture hapless students. While some of the students and their teachers fled into the bush for dear life, others were rounded up, unable to escape.
While the marauders herded the mostly boarding students and their foodstuffs into their trucks, they ran after those who tried to escape, shooting while the chase lasted. At least, four bodies of students were recovered from the bush in the nearby town of Kusur, a day after. And as the smouldering smoke subsided with the traducers long gone with many of the students, a headcount followed, to reveal that 94 students were missing.
Barely a day after the incident, authorities in Yobe State put out the news that the Nigerian troops had rescued “the 50 abducted schoolgirls in Yobe”, a report that was soon to be tacitly dismissed by the Nigerian Army, which said it could not confirm if any of the children had been rescued from their abductors. In the long run, the state’s governor, Ibrahim Gaidam, came out to deny the news of any rescue.
This abduction of school children whose exact figure was still subject to controversies at press time, has come as sheer antithesis, a shameful drift that has put a lie to the Federal Government’s claim that it had completely defeated Boko Haram and that only its remnants engaged in isolated attacks on soft targets
Before approaching the main issues in the phenomenal loss of these innocent children to the Boko Haram captivity, it is instructive to restate what residents and civilian militia groups in Dapchi had said about the gory affair. They believed that the invasion of the community was a carefully planned attack, such that it could have some insiders’ complicity, either in the military or in the other security outfits. According to them, a week before the bombardment, soldiers protecting the town were moved elsewhere, leaving the community vulnerable. But after the deed had been done, Nigerian security forces, using military jets, came to Dapchi, claiming to have successfully chased out the terrorists.
That sad aspect of the entire horrific episode is rebarbative of the revelation in the day after, when Boko Haram terrorists abducted 237 students from Chibok Secondary School in Borno State, way back in 2014. The story was told of how a foreign sleuth hinted the Nigerian military authorities that the terrorists were plotting to attack the Chibok school, to capture its students. But the country’s security agencies, armed with the information, reportedly looked the other way, until the deed was done.
If, therefore, the military guards in charge of Dapchi were withdrawn a week before the attack, to leave the locals vulnerable, then, there is a big challenge on hand, necessitating the Federal Government’s exhaustive inquest into the nature of personnel recruited into the military, with a view to purging it of bad eggs.
Aside from that, this abduction of school children whose exact figure was still subject to controversies at press time, has come as sheer antithesis, a shameful drift that has put a lie to the Federal Government’s claim that it had completely defeated Boko Haram and that only its remnants engaged in isolated attacks on soft targets. So, how does the government justify the invasion of a crisis-prone community with 18 gun-trucks of the Boko Haram militia, without the presence of the military?
Already, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has committed itself to negotiating with the militants to free Nigerian captives in their dungeon, while the militants in turn, insist on their deadly commanders in the Nigerian custody, and huge sums of money, as barter. The implication of such a devil-and-the deep-blue-sea arrangement is that, Boko Haram, which reportedly got huge sums in millions of dollars during the part-release of the Chibok girls, would spend such war chest on its weaponry, to the detriment of Nigeria. Again, their leading commanders released to them by the Nigerian government would come back smoking, on revenge mission.
Assuredly, the capturing of the school children is another window of opportunity for these modern Goths to negotiate for another windfall and the release of some of their key officers captured in the heat of hostilities. A stitch in time would have saved nine, if the abduction of the schoolgirls had been made impossible. What is left, no doubt, is to either devise ways (possibly through military action cum intelligence gathering) of rescuing the hapless girls and comforting their agonised parents, or returning to the booby trap of release by barter, and of huge cash dispossession.
As things stand, however, the way out for the Federal Government and the military authorities in nipping the Boko Haram blight in the bud, is to retreat to the drawing board, and fashion out ways of manning strategic locations across the country’s North-East borders. This would help in curtailing the influx of implacable terrorist groups, chief of which is Boko Haram.
The local troops in charge of the communities should also get new orientation and motivation, with full collaboration of a no less motivated Civilian Joint Task Force; as it is now crystal clear that the war against insurgency is far from being won.
The Federal Government should also put a pin on a suggestion that the Boko Haram members could have infiltrated the ranks of the Fulani herdsmen, going by some ‘war sophistry’ deployed by the herders in their recent attacks on the local farmers of Benue, Nasarawa and Taraba states.
Besides, this is the time for the Federal Government to justify the $1bn federation’s income it had voted to fight insurgency, as the nation can no longer wait to see
tangible results.
