Barely two months after he assumed office, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered his newly appointed military commanders to end the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast before or by December. The deadline seemed to many seasoned commentators a chimera; and though he will dispute it, the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, has just redefined the deadline and underscored its chimeric value. At the time the president gave the orders in July, December seemed far off. He appeared confident that the funds and logistics he was about to pour into the war would propel the rejuvenated military into great feats of valour. The military commanders themselves, perhaps buoyed by their elevation, eagerly embraced the deadline and suggested that the insurgents would be history by that date. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan had also given his commanders deadlines to extinguish Boko Haram, but every time he spoke of victory or set a date, he failed spectacularly. His failure led commentators to wonder about the wisdom of setting deadlines for ending wars, regardless of whether the deadlines were working guides or immutable dates. If President Buhari and his commanders are troubled by their predecessor’s past failures, they have not shown it.
It was therefore not quite baffling that shortly after he assumed office, President Buhari succumbed to the euphoria of his inauguration to reenact Dr Jonathan’s wild assumptions and love for miscalculation. Commentators were in fact chary of criticising President Buhari when he set the date, lest unhappily he should prove them wrong. He had carefully appointed the best commanders, he boasted, and he would undoubtedly empower them. Why would they not deliver on a deadline that seemed eons away? In July when he issued the deadline, December was a whopping five months away, a long time indeed. Every government official who spoke on the subject matter since then, including parliamentary leaders and party bosses exulting over their recent electoral victory, seemed confident the date was close to being sacrosanct. But December at last came like a space rocket hurtling towards earth, catching bemused presidential aides and ministers at their wit’s end. Rather than remain stupefied, however, the Information minister has preferred to waffle, more or less like a propagandist.
“That brings me to the issue of the December 31, 2015 deadline issued by President Muhammadu Buhari to our military to defeat the terrorists,” began the Information minister almost offhandedly. “Based on what I saw during my trip to the liberated areas of Borno State (which by the way is the epicentre of the war) and the briefings I received from the Chief of Defence Staff and the Theatre Commander, I can confidently inform you that our gallant military has largely met that deadline.” In case the public failed to grasp the severity of his statement, he added that “The military has so degraded the capability of Boko Haram that the terrorists can no longer hold on to any territory, just as they can no longer carry out any spectacular attacks. Remember, gentlemen, that at the height of the war, Boko Haram controlled 20 of the 27 local governments in Borno. Today, they do not control any local government anywhere.”
Conscious that the public would sneer at his confident assertions, the minister added preemptively: “I can hear you saying to yourself, ‘but the terrorists are still carrying out suicide bombings and killing people’. My response to that is that such is the nature of insurgency anywhere. Unlike a war between two armies, an insurgency never ends with an armistice. Even in countries like Colombia, where insurgency was supposed to have ended decades ago, attacks still happen.” For emphasis, the minister then concluded his redefinition of the December deadline by explaining that what was left of the insurgency was inconsequential. Said he: “The largely defeated Boko Haram has now adopted a new style: attacking soft targets like motor parks, schools, entertainment centres, religious centres, etc, killing innocent people, mostly women and children.”
The Information minister is in effect saying that insurgency can be defined in many ways, but chiefly as one in which rebels hold territories. Bombings and suicide attacks are to him mere desperate gasps of drowning Boko Haram fighters. According to him, regardless of their sporadic bombing escapades, Boko Haram has already been defeated, not even if they defiantly and symbolically raided settlements near the Chief of Army Staff’s hometown. But instinctively aware that the press would pour scorn on his declaration of victory when the war was yet to end, the Information minister addressed the press and attempted to shift and modify their reportorial perspectives. “Gentlemen, in this time of war, you cannot afford to be neutral,” he admonished. “Yes, you must remain professional at all times, and we are not asking you to do anything less, but you must also act in the national interest, always.’’ It is not clear what he expects of the press, considering his own legal and journalistic background. But he seems at once determined to foist the government’s worldview on the press and also disallow them from nurturing their professional reportage and interpretation of news.
Even then, the minister was not done. Determined to force everyone to live in denial, just as the government is already apparently doing, he conflated the government’s interest with national interest. “Acting in the national interest means not playing up reports of cowardly Boko Haram attacks on soft targets,” he said improbably. Then he began waxing lyrical: “Acting in the national interest means not regurgitating the propaganda of Boko Haram and its fellow terrorist group, ISIS. Acting in the national interest means extolling the bravery and sacrifice of our gallant troops. Acting in the national interest means not viewing the war from a partisan prism. Acting in the national interest means rallying all Nigerians, irrespective of their political, religious or ethnic background, to support the war.” It is curious that Alhaji Mohammed is not struck by the similarity of his views and arguments with those of the immediate past administration, nor yet the similarity with past military regimes whose relentless conflation of private and national interests did incalculable damage to the credibility of Nigerian leaders and the stability of the country.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Boko Haram war has neither ended nor faded from public consciousness, even though it is no longer as fierce as it used to be. In addition, contrary to the minister’s statement, the December deadline has not yet been met, and the Sambisa forest has not been cleared of terrorist activities. Substantial progress has undoubtedly been made, but the end is not yet. And as the Information minister would know, no amount of distorted reporting or national interest inspiration can create a new reality other than the existing reality. If that existing reality is not captured by the local media, because the federal government has unilaterally declared victory and moved on, the international media will capture it with a comprehensiveness and contemptuousness that would shame the locals.
