President, Muhammadu Buhari dismissed all of his country’s top military officials on Monday, his spokesman announced, after weeks of mounting violence in which Boko Haram fighters have killed hundreds of civilians. (It's about time)
The Nigerian military’s handling of Boko Haram’s bloody six-year uprising has been widely seen as dismal (an understatement). It has been faulted not only for failing to stem the extremist group’s murderous rampages, but also for making the situation worse through widespread human rights violations (Killing innocents folks when unable to kill the boko guys. Just like in soccer those days, if you miss the ball don't miss the leg).
The country’s news media has been urging Mr. Buhari for weeks to get rid of the architects of what is seen in Nigeria as a failed campaign to stop the Islamist militant group. On Monday, some analysts questioned why Mr. Buhari, who took office in late May, waited so long (Mr. Buhari is not one to buy a pig in a poke, he is not one to act without a proper understanding of the situation).
“The surprise for me is that it didn’t happen much earlier, given the terrible performance of the armed forces,” said Jibrin Ibrahim, a political scientist. “We thought it would be one of his first acts.” (Mr. Jibrin expects or expected Mr. Buhari to shoot first and then ask questions later)
Two of the officials who were dismissed on Monday — Alex Badeh, the chief of the defense staff, and Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minimah, the head of the army — were cited in a recent Amnesty International report, which accused them of being responsible for war crimes committed under their command. (These are the type of soldiers Nigerians call korofo, soldiers who beat up everyone that comes across their path).
Mr. Buhari, a former general who once ruled the country as a military dictator, also replaced his national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, on Monday. As the coordinator of Nigeria’s strategy against Boko Haram, Mr. Dasuki has been the object of particularly sharp criticism (It doesn't matter if he was effective or not, as long as his strategy has been failing he is incompetent).
The purge comes a week before Mr. Buhari is scheduled to visit Washington, meet with President Obama and work on strategy against Boko Haram with American officials. Relations between the American and Nigerian militaries were all but frozen under Mr. Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, with the American side denying assistance on a broad range of issues to a military that was broadly tainted by well-documented human rights violations (The American side refused to give teeth to rabid dogs which GEJ planned to utilize in rigging the elections)
Mr. Buhari immediately announced replacements for the fired officials. Most significant is the elevation of Maj. Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, currently the head of the multinational anti-Boko Haram force based in N’Djamena, Chad, to be the new army chief of staff. Coordination among armies in the affected region — those of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria — has been notoriously poor, and the other three countries say Nigeria has been at fault (That is the effect of the huge pride of the giant ant of Africa).
Now, with General Buratai, Mr. Buhari is “focusing on somebody who has skills with the different armies,” Mr. Lubeck said. Underscoring the regional threat, over last weekend Boko Haram staged attacks here in Niger, where militants struck a prison in Diffa, east of the capital, Niamey; a suicide attacker, a man in a full-face veil disguised as a woman, struck a market in N’Djamena, which killing at least 15 people; and a suicide attack in northern Cameroon killed about a dozen civilians.
For months, as the military announced new offensives against Boko Haram, the group captured town after town in Nigeria’s northeast, virtually unhindered. For weeks, it threatened the regional capital, Maiduguri, and it sent soldiers fleeing ahead of large-scale civilian massacres in the region’s villages. Americans and numerous analysts said the army had been hollowed out by years of corruption and poor leadership.
With the approach of this spring’s presidential election and Mr. Jonathan facing defeat, his appointed army chiefs forced through a six-week delay in the vote, during which they repeatedly announced sudden and unexpected successes against Boko Haram. Army chiefs boasted that the Boko Haram problem would be virtually eliminated by Election Day (The braggarts were singing tunes which they thought would swing the election in Jona's favor. These bastards sentence young gallant soldiers to death for refusing to go to war against boko haram with bathroom slippers and their dicks in their hands).
Whatever gains had been scored were fleeting, as the pace of Boko Haram’s attacks picked up full speed again with Mr. Buhari’s inauguration and his vows to crush the group. By some estimates, more than 500 people have been killed in that period, with almost daily reports of suicide bombings and massacres. Among the latest are reports of the killing of 43 people by Boko Haram late last week in remote villages in Borno State. (The states that promoted the sharia law are the ones suffering from boko haram now).
They are getting what the clamoured for. (It is unfortunate though, that there are many innocent people amongst the victims of sharia and boko haram)
