Tag: damage

Dateline Abuja, June 25, 2014: There was no hint that the phone call I received from Suleiman Bisallah, my very close friend and professional colleague of many years standing, was the last time we would speak, until three hours later when another colleague broke the devastating news that the same Bisallah was one of the victims of the bomb-blast that took place at Emab Plaza in the heart of Abuja.

Bisallah was the Managing Editor of the New Telegraph newspaper and had gone to Emab Plaza to pick his phone that he had earlier taken there for repairs. He told me on phone that he was rushing to the plaza and that he was going to meet me at home, as he often did, later in the evening. Barely 30 minutes after we spoke, Bisallah met his untimely death, in the most devastating of ways. His sad demise has been counted as a big achievement by Boko Haram.

This was the death that transformed me from an editor that was just reporting insurgency, from the comfort of my office, with little understanding of its impact, to one who knows what the Boko Haram war and its devastating effect really means. It automatically changed the way I report the insurgency.

Two years earlier, on a sponsored trip to Turkey, alongside nine title editors of the then leading newspapers in the country, the President of that country’s Journalists and Writers Foundation (the equivalent of the Nigerian Guild of Editors), had told us that even though the leading newspapers in that country belonged to the opposition, the editors have made themselves a firm promise to help the government by stopping  any prominent publication of the dastardly activities of the PKK terrorist group. That decision had gone a long way in alienating the terrorists, and they are only regrouping now that the Turkish government has unjustly seized the same newspapers that were helping it to win the war against terror.

It was after the Emab Plaza bombing I realised that by helping our armed forces and prominently projecting their victories and denying the enemy the same luxury, we are in reality not helping just the government of the day, but basically ourselves. Terrorists in all parts of the globe thrive in publicity, and seeing their acts of destruction prominently in the press goes a long way to encourage them to do more. Sadly, the same Boko Haram insurgents that we were inadvertently helping did not spare us. They bombed the offices of THISDAY in Abuja and some other newspapers in Kaduna and killed scores of our colleagues. Boko Haram leaders threatened to wipe all journalists out of existence until they realise that will ultimately deny them the cheap publicity they were getting. More than ever before, I saw the need to help our soldiers whose call of duty demands that they leave behind members of their beloved families and stake their lives to ensure you and I live in peace.

While we complain bitterly each time NEPA switches off electricity supply to our homes or offices, perhaps only because we were watching a television drama or some news, those soldiers are facing – and even expecting – death every minute or second, as they face the enemy in such dreaded places as the Sambisa Forest that we the perennial critics could not even imagine treading on, not with all the money in the world.

Four types of individuals or groups are not likely to appreciate the deep sacrifice the Nigerian military is making in quelling the Boko Haram insurgency: they include those who have never lost anyone that is dear to them, to the insurgency, as well as those who have never witnessed first-hand, the scale of damage occasioned by insurgency. Others include those who only saw war on television and therefore don’t know what it means in real life, and those who benefit, in whatever way, from war. This probably informs why some of us mistakenly regard the military as our enemies that we must do everything to bring down, forgetting that without them, we will be forced by agents of darkness to abandon these homes and offices from which we comfortably operate. If in doubt, ask the IDPs.

All over the world, the most senior war commanders largely only design how to win the war and command their troops to execute the plan. They hardly venture to the warfront. But apart from the unprecedented commitment of the Buhari administration in seeing to the end of the Boko Haram insurgency, one of the key reasons the war has been won is the quality of the people appointed by the government to lead the armed forces.

For example, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusufu Buratai, the Chief of Army Staff whose troops do most of the dangerous work, has since made a habit of spending lots of time with soldiers in the trenches. The very day he was appointed to his current post in July 2015, Buratai moved out of Abuja to the war front in the North-east, a move that helped change the course of the war and marked the beginning of the end of Boko Haram terrorists group’s insurgency. The troops reasoned that if their Chief of Army Staff, who can choose to remain and operate from his air conditioned office, can leave it all, abandoning his family as they all did, and stake his life to be with them,  they have every reason to do more and win the war.

In other words, the acts of unprecedented bravery and selflessness by Buratai helped reduce a complex theory into practical steps. Whereas the perennial critics were rushing to their towns and choice capitals of the world to spend their Sallah and Christmas breaks with their beloved families, he chose to spend it in the trenches with the troops, eating the same food and drinking the same water as them. Now every senior army officer has taken a cue from their Chief of Army Staff and are all on their toes in the bid to give their best to Nigeria.

Those troops that have staked everything to rid Nigeria of a nagging insurgency which had claimed lives of tens of thousands of civilians will be the last persons to deliberately target the same people they have toiled so much to defend and protect. Perhaps the best way to understand the operational error that led to the Nigerian Air Force pilot mistaking an IDP camp for a Boko Haram congregation is a Hausa proverb which roughly translates to something like mistakes are often made in the frenzy of winning a difficult war.

The Boko Haram terrorists are like the drowning man who will cling to anything to keep afloat. They go for soft-targets in desperation to appear to be in business, just as Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other international terrorist groups that have been defeated by the strongest military in the world still go for similar targets to appear to be relevant. Perhaps it is their way of attracting continuous funding from their sponsors.

It says a lot about the expertise and professionalism of the Nigerian armed forces that until now, very little or no collateral damage was witnessed, fighting a group of people that have no clear identity; who are also members of the society that look no different from you and I. If the military was bereft of conscience, they could deny responsibility for the error that unfortunately cost tens of innocent people their dear lives. It is reassuring that we now have an armed forces which  believe that much as it strives for the best, it cannot be perfect, just as no human institution has ever been.

And it comes as a huge additional relief that President Buhari has expressed deep regret with the terrible incident and consoled the families that lost the very people the government spares nothing to protect.

• Gaya is the Vice President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.