• Ex-Army officer explains why Nigeria is a fertile ground for foreign attack
•Says, ‘$1 bn is not too much to fight terrorism’
By Olakunle Olafioye
The proposal to withdraw $1billion from the Excess Crude Account, ECA by the Federal Government to prosecute the war against Boko Haram is one issue that has put the country on the edge not necessarily because of the controversy it has generated but due to the far-reaching implications the issue portends for the security of the nation.
In this interview, Col. Gabriel Adetunji Ajayi (retd) speaks on the dangers inherent in the attempt to politicize the issue as well as reasons Nigeria remains one of the fertile grounds for the over 6000 ISIS fighters dislodged from Syria and other volatile regions in the Middle East.
He also identifies alternative route the government needs to explore in the fight to stamp out insurgency from Nigeria.
Nigeria is planning to commit a fresh $1billion into the war against insurgency. How do we justify this huge investment despite the claims by the military authority that Boko Haram had been degraded?
The amount looks so huge to many people because of the poverty situation in the country. The most expensive pre-occupation one can indulge in, in the world is fighting warfare, whether it is insurgency or counter-militancy. It is only peace that is less expensive. So, that is no money: that amount cannot even buy more than four aircraft for the air force. We don’t need to look at the money.
So long there are still soldiers deployed in the battle, they will continue to fight and fight. It is a fallacy to say you have defeated the insurgents. You cannot defeat any insurgent group, you can only degrade their capacity to carry out operations and they will eventually fizzle out because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
Terrorists are like fish, so long there is water they will continue to survive at any rate. The strategies of insurgents are ambushes, raids, kidnapping and suicide bombing. It is just because our environment is poverty stricken, that is why the money looks so huge.
America is investing over $3billon daily in warfare around the world. If it has given three-quarter of the money it spent in Afghanistan to exit the Taliban Government in the country, Afghanistan would have been like a country in Europe today. We cannot eat our cake and have it. So long as we feel that the only way to solve the problem of insurgency is by military operation we will continue to spend money.
The reason why people continue to complain is because the government has never been transparent. I am not necessarily referring to the current government. Nigerians, due to our past experiences, do not believe the government whenever they claim they want to spend money on any project. That is the crux of the problem. It is not because the operation has gulped so much money.
The most foolish thing in the world is to fight a war, and unfortunately that is what the world has been engaging in. So our people are complaining because, abinitio, government has never been transparent. They don’t know how much a bullet cost; they don’t know the cost of an air force bomb. So when they hear that money is budgeted for security they will complain that the money is too much.
For instance, that $1billion cannot even buy an X-class naval warship. It is just because of the system of government we run in Nigeria that makes people to feel concerned. The people do not believe the government is going to spend $1billion on the war against insurgency; their thinking is that they are going to share the money.
In your own opinion, do you think the controversy trailing the money precipitated by lack of trust on the government or it is politicians that are trying to play politics with it?
One, people do not trust the government. I am not talking about the current government because I remember when somebody asked why Nigerians did not protest when the cost of petroleum products was hiked, the general feeling was that it was because the people trust the president.
So the whole issue borders on trust, which governments in the past have not been able to sufficiently demonstrate to Nigerians. For instance, Nigerians do not know what it cost the government to prosecute the war in Sierra Leone and Liberia till today. The issue of politicians trying to play politics with the issue on ground is another reason for the controversy.
People don’t trust the government and the politicians themselves do not trust one another because they know what typical Nigerian politicians are capable of doing. Let us not deceive ourselves, we are not in the western world where there is accountability, here there is no accountability.
Don’t you sense any danger in the way issues that border on national security are often politicised in Nigeria?
Not only the issue of national security; Nigerian politicians are fond of playing politics with vital issues to the detriment of Nigeria as a country, to the detriment of our national security. There are many issues that are not supposed to be put in the open, which are already in public knowledge.
Foreign countries will just be laughing at us because they do not need to send spies to Nigeria for covert intelligence gathering, they only need to get such intelligence from the pages of newspapers. The first thing that we must establish in Nigeria is restructuring of this nation.
The country should be restructured in such a way that will bring confidence in the people. People do not have confidence in the system. There is nothing to believe in; nationalism is lacking in Nigeria, so nobody trusts anybody.
Why has Nigeria continued to experience resurgence in the activities of this insurgent group?
What we are seeing is what is actually called insurgency. Insurgency is not a war that is fought 24 hours a day and 30 days a month. It is not a beach party. It is a hit and run battle. The insurgents will give a chance to think that they have been brought down and you will relax thinking you have won, then they will spring up again, taking you unawares.
Insurgency in Palestine started before the birth of Jesus Christ, yet it has not ended. There is nowhere in the world where they experienced insurgency that lasted for months or so. The other time Boko Haram over-reached itself by deciding to occupy a ground and challenge an army of a country on their own ground, it was foolishness on their part. Immediately the army descended on them and routed them, people thought the war had ended.
No, the war did not end there. It was the foolishness of the insurgents that the military checked then. It was foolishness that made the Boko Haram to think they would be able to fight an army of a nation when there is a government on ground in the country. So they have now resorted to real insurgency. And we should praise the Nigerian army for being able to successfully restrict this insurgency to the North-east of Nigeria. There is nothing stopping the Boko Haram suicide bombers coming to Lagos, Port Harcourt, Ibadan and other busy cities to blow themselves up, but because of the doggedness of the military to suppress them, it has been very difficult for them to get to other parts of Nigeria.
What we are having now is real insurgency. They can stay for days without any war, no fighting, but the day they are going to strike, it will be a major attack with huge casualty. We must realise that those who constitute the fighters of the insurgents are within the cities and households.
The reason why it is difficult to destroy Boko Haram is because it is an idea. You cannot destroy an idea with a point of the sword or with a machine gun. You can only defeat an idea with another idea that is superior to that idea. And that is the other side of the operation that Nigeria is not exploiting. What are the Chief Imams doing? What are the clerics doing to counter Shekau’s propaganda that certain things are going to be to the benefits of the fighters when they die? What are they doing to counter this falsehood? You need a better idea to fight the idea of Boko Haram.
Those that are being born now are being indoctrinated to grow up and become Boko Haram fighters. It is only when there is a superior idea that the idea of Boko Haram can be defeated. The battle against Boko Haram is not like the battle between Nigeria and Biafra. This is a religious ideological battle where some people have taken their stand on certain things and you have to convince them against that thing. So whether you like it or not, people that are suffering from this war will even support the Boko Haram insurgents because it is an idea.
Still on the issue of deploying counter-idea to fight the Boko Haram menace, how best can this be done?
First, the government must ensure that the insurgency being experienced in parts of the North must not be allowed to happen in any other part of the country. One of the ways to achieving this is through fairness. We must make Nigeria attractive to everybody possibly by restructuring this country.
Secondly, I expect that there should have been an intellectual forum made up of people that are grounded in the ground norm of Islam to be able to dish out right and correct doctrine to those who are yet to embrace Boko Haram ideology. So many people are yet to embrace the ideology but the insurgents are making more people to embrace their ideology every day. People must be made to understand that what they are preaching is a false doctrine. If that is not done there is no way we will be able to suppress them totally.
Look at Southern Lebanon, I participated in the United Nations interim peace keeping force there. The two largest refugee camps in the world are in Lebanon and they are largest recruiting grounds for terrorists in the whole world. The people who constitute these recruits are themselves victims of terrorism. Can you imagine victims of terrorism being active participants in what made them destitute? It is a question of ideological brainwashing. So unless we do something to counter such ideology we will continue to have the problem.
When Yusuf started before it became Boko Haram, it was supposed to have been brought down not by force of arm but by other means. But because we believe that everything should be met with police action, we escalated the problem. You can only use the police to suppress some of the people some of the time but you cannot use the police to suppress the people all of the time. The will of the people will always triumph because the mind will always conquer the sword. What is in the mind of the people is stronger than the sword. But the stage we are now is to ensure that such development does not recur in other parts of the country.
What do you make of the alarm raised by the AU’s Commissioner for Security over the imminent influx of ISIS fighters dislodged from Syria into West Africa, with Nigeria as one of their likely destinations?
Do you need someone to raise this alarm before you make what we call international military assessment? With so much pressure on them in Syria and all those places, where else do you think they will head to? It is to Africa where they think there will be less pressure. Military experts know that their next destination is Africa. Africa is a fertile ground for them because of our religious inclination. People here preach religion, they think religion. They are not thinking development; they are not thinking industrialization. Today they are fighting on hijab, tomorrow is on another thing.
Any place that is so religiously-watered like we have is a fertile ground for such thing. We are the one that are making the ground fertile for them to come because instead of development, instead of industrialization we are talking religion. These people will not come in with weapons on their hands, rather they will disguise as religious people and somebody will tell me that in religion there are no boundaries, its brotherhood of nations. So Nigeria and other African countries are fertile ground. Somalia, Southern Sudan, Congo Central Africa, then Nigeria have joined this unenviable club due to religious fanaticism. So they have very good reasons to come here.
Look at Mali, the whole Mali is disorganized; parts of Niger is disorganized, parts of Chad is disorganized, the same thing with Cameroun. So if our neighbours are disorganized what do you think will happen to us here? These disorganized countries are areas that are attractive to these people. Today we don’t have mercenaries so ISIL and the rest have taken the role of mercenaries. It is unfortunate that Nigeria that is supposed to play the role of a leader to other African countries is embroiled in religious problem instead of development, industrialization, education so that people will be able to differentiate what is right from what is wrong.
In your own assessment, do you think the Nigerian military has what it takes to contain this anticipated invasion?
There should be no doubt on the mind of Nigerians as to whether the Nigerian military is capable of tackling any form of aggression. The Nigerian military is the oldest in Africa. It was the Nigerian military that restored the sovereignty of Kenya; we restored the sovereignty of Ethiopia. Our military has the capacity to defend the territorial integrity of the country.
When you talk of Nigerian military, you are talking of Nigeria as a country. If the President wants five million Nigerians to enlist in the army all he needs to do is to make the announcement that everybody should join the military. I believe the Nigerian military has the capacity to respond to threats. The only worry I have is because of our religious division. This is the only thing drawing us back on the path of progress. We can defend ourselves because we have a very strong and powerful military.
In the midst of this daunting challenge how do we boost the morale of the soldiers prosecuting the war against insurgents?
Talking about the morale of the soldiers is a different kettle of tea. The people there should be able to know what to do to boost the morale of the soldiers on the battlefield. There was a time I suggested that our pharmaceutical companies, beverage companies and others should endeavor to send their products to the soldiers on the battlefields as relief materials and as a way of contributing their own quota in boosting the morale of the soldiers.
This will make them happy and believe that Nigerians are really concerned about them. The psychology of the soldiers will be affected the moment we allow them to feel that we are not concerned about them. But if we show concern we will be able to raise their morale.