The Nation Newspaper

Tag: offensive

  • Army, Air Force renew offensive against Boko Haram

    Army, Air Force renew offensive against Boko Haram

    The Nigerian Army and the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) have renewed their attacks against Boko Haram insurgents in the Northeast, destroying their structures and killing scores of them in various military operations.

    According to a statement from the Director of Army Public Relations, Brig. General Sani Usman, troops of 112 Task Force Battallion and Mobile Strike Team were able to locate the hideouts of the insurgents in parts of Borno State and launched attacks on them, recovering weapons and vehicles from the insurgents.

    Similarly in a separate statement, The Director of Public Relations and Information of the Nigerian Air Force, Air Commodore Olatokunbo Adesanya said the NAF has continued its air strikes against Boko Haram to ensure the group is cleared from the Northeast as soon as possible.

    Gen Sani Usman said : “Troops of 112 Task Force Battalion and Mobile Strike Teams of 22 Brigade of Operation Lafiya Dole in collaboration with some members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) have (on Friday, 27th October 2017), based on credible information from well meaning Nigerians, carried out clearance operations in Gawa, Bone, Kajeri 1, Kajeri 2, Kube, Dubula, Boboshe 1 and Boboshe 2 villages, Borno State.

    “During the operation, the gallant troops discovered that the terrorists had make shift night market in Boboshe with newly harvested farm produce on display for sale.

    “After conducting a thorough search of the vicinity, they recovered three Isuzu vehicles, four Dane guns, one dummy gun, suspected to be used for training of inducted Boko Haram terrorists and mattresses hidden under shrubs, amongst several other items ahead of Bone village.

    “They also rescued five persons taken captives by the criminal terrorists gang at Boboshe 1 and Dubula. The troops of Operation Lafiya Dole are more determined and resolute to ensure that the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists are located and neutralised.

    “Accordingly, the general public is please requested to continue to volunteer credible information to security agencies in the ongoing clearance operations in the North East.”

    On his part, Air Commodore Adesanya said: “The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has intensified its intensive day and night aerial bombardments of Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) locations within the Northeast.

    “On 26 October 2017, the fourth day of the ongoing Operation RUWAN WUTA II, the NAF conducted air interdiction on some structures in DURE, a BHT-infested location, 12km east of SAMBISA. Reports from NAF Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance platforms had revealed the gradual resurgence of BHT activities in the settlement, particularly at the targeted structures, which were hideouts for the terrorists.

    “Five aircraft namely three x Alpha Jet aircraft and two x F-7Ni aircraft conducted the air interdiction missions. The Alpha Jet aircraft and the F-Ni aircraft took turns to attack the location with bombs, destroying the targeted structures and killing the terrorists.”

  • TAN’s offensive rallies

    SIR: If Nigeria were to be a country where commonsense means anything, especially the ruling elite, kick-starting any form of political campaign or rally ahead of the 2015 general election at this critical moment would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.  I consider it shameful and laughable that a country of Nigeria’s size and pedigree now runs to Cameroun and Chad to secure her borders!

    We are presently at the mercy of Boko Haram’s increasing onslaught and our leaders’ screaming incompetence. An average Nigerian lives in fear, lacks access to basic needs of life. To worsen matters, the nation’s abundant material resources is tapped, processed and shared by our glutinous leaders and their cronies. Nothing is said about the poor masses. They only remember them during elections.

    It is the annoying how some individuals are trying hard to sell a cheap dummy to us ahead of the 2015 general election. The body behind this badly packaged campaign is the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria (TAN). It claims it is doing the bidding of Nigerians by collecting signatures of those who desire that President Goodluck Jonathan seeks re-election in the 2015 presidential election.

    Those behind TAN are faces we are very much familiar with. These same individuals were part and parcel of those who worked for President’s Jonathan election way back in 2011.

    I wonder why we should daily be viewing 2015 election campaign ads at a time the whereabouts of over 200 school girls remain unknown, having been seized from their hostels by suspected Boko Haram members more than four months ago. The sad reality is that the system, after operating in denial, appears clueless as to what to do to secure the release of these innocent girls. One had expected the system to remain sober, and keep reassuring Nigerians of what it is doing to bring back the girls alive. It is however disturbing that, apart from the #BringBackOurGirls group and a few other voices, most Nigerians have since moved on as though these girls in captivity were never part of us as a nation. This is how terrible things have become in this part of the world. We are always in a hurry to forget things that should ordinarily remain permanent in our hearts.

    Imagine a nation grappling with excruciating and monstrous insurgency spending heavily on pre-election campaigns through money-gulping rallies and media ads. TAN and its activities are a sad reminder of what we all witnessed when the dark-goggled General Sani Abacha nursed the evil idea of transmuting from a military head of state to a civilian president. The story of how one Daniel Kanu launched his One Million Man March code-named, Youth Earnestly Ask for Abacha (YEAA) is still very fresh in our memory. Kanu and his team of opportunists formed part of those recruited to drum support for Abacha’s plot to remain in power for life. The rest as they say, is now history.

    Sadly, since we are bad students of history, we have since obliterated that part of our recent past from our minds and information warehouse. We have since moved on, as usual, pretending as though all is well. Like the YEAA campaigners, these TAN fellows are spending heavy sums of money to ‘impress it on the President to seek re-election’.

    The whole thing is a grand deception; an unintelligent attempt to divert attention from burning national issues. Regrettably, the President, the very man these fellows are spending heavily on, keeps recording spectacular lows in all areas of our national life. He appears ill-informed and not abreast of happenings within and around his office as president.

    Who is financing TAN’s activities is another germane question. We demand urgent answer to this question. How come the group’s activities are centred around President Jonathan alone? We had better watch this disturbing trend before it consumes us and all that we hold so dear to ourselves.

    Abdullahi Yunusa

    Imane, Kogi State

  • Offensive graffiti at Osoba’s home

    Unknown persons have defaced former Ogun State Governor Aremo Olusegun Osoba’s Ibara GRA home in Abeokuta with a derogatory graffiti.

    The graffiti, written on the fence in Yoruba Language, urged Osoba to accept Governor Ibikunle Amosun as his governor and leader.

    It reads: “Osoba gba fun Oga e (Osoba accept your boss), Osoba gba fun SIA (Osoba accept Amosun).”

    The graffiti, written in black ink, was noticed at dawn yesterday.

    An observer told The Nation that the perpetrators of the act could be fifth columnists trying to portray Amosun in bad light.

    The observer, who does not want to be named, said Amosun has always referred to Osoba as his leader and could not be a party to the graffiti.

    A security guard at Osoba’s home said the act might have been carried out around 4am because he patrolled the residence around 3am.

    Osoba could not be reached for comments, but while addressing his loyalists at the same residence a few months ago, he said his reputation cannot be soiled or bought.

    One of Amosun’s aides, Mr Shola Balogun, said the governor holds Osoba in high esteem.

  • UN ‘offensive’ brigade in DRC not the solution

    Last Thursday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the deployment of about 3,100 peacekeepers in the restive eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The peacekeepers, according to a report, have received orders “to carry out targeted offensive operations and attempt to neutralise armed groups.” The approval anticipates that the intervention force or offensive brigade will be stationed in the North Kivu province in the eastern part of the country where government forces have so far unsuccessfully tried to pacify a rebel group there called the March 23 Movement or M23. The war in the region between the army and rebels has led to the displacement of over a million people, while an additional 300,000 in the southeastern province of Katanga have also been displaced.

    The DRC has for long been a seething cauldron of rebellion, chaos and death. Barely a few months after independence, Joseph Mobutu, then a colonel, exploited the power struggle between President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and helped it to degenerate irretrievably. The ensuing crisis created room for foreign intervention and eventually led to the death of Lumumba at the hands of a coalition of Belgian, American and Moise Tshombe-led Katangan separatists. After a long, brutal and exploitative rule, Mobutu was overthrown during the First Congo War (1996-1998) by a rebel coalition led by the late President Laurent-Desire Kabila. He was helped in no small measures by Ugandan and Rwandan forces.

    By 2001, however, Laurent Kabila was assassinated, but not before the misunderstanding with his backers, particularly Rwanda, had degenerated in 1998 into the Second Congo War (1998-2003). He was succeeded by his son, Joseph. This latter war cost an estimated five million or more lives, reportedly the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II, and millions more displaced. It sucked in nine African nations and more than 20 armed groups. For a country of more than 75 million people and an untapped natural resource endowment estimated at some $24 trillion, it is no wonder that the struggle for the country’s rich mineral resources is partly responsible for its instability.

    One of the factors that triggered the Second Congo War was the struggle between Hutu and Tutsi armed groups who made themselves available for proxy battles between Kinshasha and Kigali. The eastern part of DRC, particularly North and South Kivu, is destabilised by the Banyamulenge, who are ethnic Tutsis. The Tutsi-led Rwandan government has always found it convenient to support the Banyamulenge armed group, the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), against Kinshasha, especially in view of the activities of the defeated and weakened Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The Hutu militias threaten Rwanda with cross-border raids. Apart from the restiveness of Kasai-Oriental Province, particularly the Ituri region, there is also the uncontrollable Mai Mai rebel group created by Laurent Kabila in northern Katanga.

    In effect the DRC is unsettled by a combination of economic, ethnic, domestic and international political factors, though the country is predominantly Christian. Until these factors are resolved, it is hard to see how the UN’s offensive brigade can pacify the eastern part of the DRC. It must not be forgotten that many peace deals had been signed and had collapsed under the weight of ethnic tensions and foreign intervention and meddlesomeness. It is recalled that the very first peacekeeping operation Nigeria was involved in was in the Congo. Incredulously, Chad, a smaller country than Nigeria, has shown keener interest in the DRC, had even once sent troops to intervene there, not for peacekeeping but as combatants, and had also shown interest and intervened in Central African Republic (CAR). Nigeria is perhaps too preoccupied with its own troubles to attempt to match South Africa in CAR, and Chad in both CAR and DRC.

    If the UN hopes to make any headway in the DRC labyrinth, it must actively go beyond the February 2013 peace deal signed in Ethiopia by 10 or 11 countries (Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania) to bring peace to the DRC. A brigade may prove unable to resolve the long-running Congo crisis where peace deals are routinely broken because of greed and deep-seated domestic and foreign mistrust. The country’s potential wealth and ethnic pastiche are simply too explosive a mix to respond quickly or easily to a brigade of offensive peacekeepers.