Olatunji Ololade and Remilekun Balogun (RB)—the protagonist of ‘Of Gods and Their Claytoys’, his debut novel, whose initial draft I read many years ago—have much in common. Both are products of the Mass Communication department of the then Ogun State Polytechnic. They are serial award-winning journalists, driven by a passion for people-centered stories and an innate willingness to take risks.
However, unlike his protagonist, Ololade is married with children and holds second and third degrees. Commitment to a woman, a challenge for his character, is not an issue for him.
Written in rich poetic prose, combined with a smooth mix of simple, compound, and compound-complex sentences, the novel follows RB, who often claims to be an only child, orphaned two decades ago by a tragic accident. But the truth is far messier—he has never known his biological father and he has every reason to doubt the woman who insists she gave birth to him.
Given the circumstances of his birth, RB’s early years are hard. Funding his education involves menial jobs and being helped out by a friend.
The death of the woman he calls Mama—the one who told him that “black was the colour of bad things, of dirty, unwanted things”—forces him to move through life alone. Friendship, to him, is a luxury no one has earned.
When RB comes of age, he chooses journalism as a profession. On the job, he discovers that the profession is not as honourable as he thinks. For instance, he discovers senior colleagues—men he once admired while growing up—are entangled in racketeering; their hands stained with filthy lucre, their pens unwilling to commit the truth to paper. Also, he finds out that election season is financially advantageous for journalists because of the abundance of breaking news stories and the influx of money from political campaigns.
RB sees how during election periods, politicians are more willing to spend to influence media coverage or public perception. The author’s use of the imagery of money “flooding the economy like a burst dam” emphasizes the sudden and overwhelming flow of funds. The personal benefits journalists gain—such as buying new cars, acquiring bigger homes, or paying school fees—suggest that lucrative opportunities arise during this time. However, this also raises ethical considerations about the influence of money on journalistic integrity.
Though everyone seems to be losing their heads, he chooses to keep his and this creates antagonism for him. The opportunity to cement his image as the incorruptible one falls on his lap when he witnesses an ethical breach at the State House, where correspondents openly brawl over cash handouts from a governor. The altercation turns fatal, resulting in the death of one journalist, a tragedy swiftly covered up. But RB refuses to let the truth be buried. He publishes a damning report, unleashing chaos as powerful forces move to silence him. Death threats collide with death threats.
He is transferred to Enugu as punishment for his audacity. Months into his stay, he stumbles upon a major story—one a powerful senator is desperate to bury. Determined to uncover the truth, he pushes forward, only to face the wrath of his boss in Lagos, who promptly summons him back. From that moment, his life spirals into further chaos, a relentless cycle of danger and escape, as if he were born to run—or destined for trouble, one day at a time.
Beyond its strong focus on journalism, Ololade’s novel is about Nigeria. The Nigeria in his story, much like the one we know, struggles with corruption, poor leadership, decaying infrastructure, and mediocrity.
The Nigerians in his novel grow weary of coexisting and decide to go their separate ways along ethnic lines. At some point, cities fall, their foundations shaken as violence spills into every corner. In open streets and secluded courtyards, the air, heavy with gunpowder, distorts the line between friend and foe. Pitched battles transform bustling avenues into rivers of blood. Spent shells and smuggled arms scatter across the asphalt, while the ordinary become warriors, standing shoulder to shoulder with soldiers in the chaos of war.
The fallout of the disintegration reveals that the solutions to our challenges aren’t as simple as each region forming its own republic.
The novel’s pages brim with remarkable characters. There’s Chiamaka, a fierce feminist who eats like a newly freed convict, drinks like a sailor, and loves with the hunger of a nymphomaniac. Mama, the only mother he has ever known, provides a grounding presence. Then there’s Gbotie, the closest thing RB has to a father figure—a journalist with an unshakable devotion to truth. Enitan and Alhaji, a couple pivotal to his journey, offer him a lifeline toward becoming someone in life. And finally, there’s Alhaja, Enitan’s mother, who boldly encourages her daughter to take a lover to make up for Alhaji’s shortcomings in the bedroom.
Ololade skillfully deploys allusion, imagery, and poetry to craft a novel that is both probing and powerful. Its crackling energy and unflinching depth of this keenly observant and compelling novel make it an unforgettable read. It will resonate long after the final page.
My final take: Ololade wears his social responsibility cap with pride, offering sharp insights into critical issues affecting Nigeria’s growth in this audacious, scathing, and riveting work. Through robust discourse on leadership, subsidy removal, and more, he provides a thought-provoking guide to the nation’s most pressing challenges.
The issues he raised make me come to the conclusion that like every nation on earth, Nigeria isn’t perfect and there’s no doubt that many of our challenges are self-inflicted, and the solutions are in our hands. And until we confront these issues head-on, we will continue going in circles, trapped in a cycle of stagnation.
I missed the chance to write this when Olatunji Ololade clinched the 2021 prestigious Fetisov Journalism Awards (FJA) in the Outstanding Contribution to Peace category. His victory came with a unique silver statuette, meticulously handcrafted in Switzerland, and prize money exceeding $100,000.
Ololade’s ‘The boys who swapped football for bullets’ outshone formidable contenders from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden and Syria.
He just added a new feather to his cap, a doctorate degree. For those who know Ololade, his intellectual depth isn’t in doubt. Every discussion of his drips with uncanny insights. What makes this feat remarkable is the fact that Ololade didn’t start his higher education with a varsity degree. He started with an Ordinary National Diploma from the then Ogun State Polytechnic. A Higher National Diploma, NIPR Diploma, postgraduate diploma and Master’s Degree later followed, feats he achieved while in active journalism and writing fantastic reports.
From our TELL days in the mid-2000s, this prose stylist’s great promise was only unclear to the ‘undiscerning’. No wonder his years in The Nation have yielded laurels upon laurels that made him the newspaper’s most decorated and one of Nigeria’s best. At the last count, he has an astounding tally of about 40 journalism prizes.
Such consistent triumphs earned him the endearing moniker, “Serial Award Winner”—a title I proudly coined for him in 2014, the year he bagged the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year MSD Health and Medical Reporting Award for his poignant story, “This marriage will kill me – Tragedy of Nigeria’s child brides.”
That same year, Ololade swept numerous other prestigious awards, including the Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA) prizes for Human Rights Reporting and Entertainment Reporting, and the Diamond Awards for Media Excellence (DAME) prize in Health Reporting. His investigative prowess also earned him finalist spots for the Kurt Schork Memorial Award in International Journalism in both 2014 and 2016.
One of his most courageous undertakings was a groundbreaking five-part investigative series, a collaboration with Kunle Akinrinade, a First Class graduate. This exposé detailed the devastating environmental pollution caused by LafargeWAPCO Plc in its host communities.
In 2023, Ololade revisited the Lafarge story, this time in a compelling three-part series that forced the government to take decisive action.
Ololade is more than a journalist; he is an academic; he is a novelist. I have read his novel manuscript. He has also worked on biographies.
Life, death, sacrifices of humanitarian aid workers in Nigeria northeast
Josiah Wangae, a Kenyan, makes his living in Nigeria’s theatre of death. In Maiduguri, Borno State, Wangae prowls the killing fields, where local military fight terrorist sect, Boko Haram, off the streets and desert tracts. Sometimes, the insurgents perform a bloody conquest and Wangae gets trapped in the middle of it.
Just recently, he got caught in a terrorist attack in Konduga. “It was a very close shave. I almost lost my life in the attack. I was in the area for field work when the insurgents (Boko Haram) invaded the town. They shot at everyone. They killed people and kidnapped underage children. It was a very sad incident,” said the staff of a United Nations (UN) multilateral health group.
In the wake of the attack, several local and international aid workers fled the scene of mayhem. But the Kenyan resolutely stayed back. Like he did in conflict zones in Syria and Afghanistan, Wangae dug into the trenches of pain and human need at Konduga.
Somebody has to help. Somebody has to go where nobody else would go. I have a wife and infant sons back in my country. It’s not easy working and staying so far away from them but my wife understands. I hope my children do too as they grow older. It’s not easy but my loved ones take solace in the fact that the work I do and the people I work for, are committed to helping the needy and making the world a better place – Wange.
“Indeed, Wangae dares ‘what nobody else would. He ventures where too many of his peers would abstain. To the middle-aged man and father of two, the possibility of dying or getting abducted does not deter him from assisting displaced persons and several other victims of Boko Haram’s bloody campaign across Nigeria’s northeast.
“But it is not all close shaves and lucky breaks for the aid workers and his colleagues. Wangae remembers with regret, the tragic death of his friends and colleagues in the dismal Rann bombing on January 17. “The loss is inestimable,” he said.
Corroborating him, Husseinah Abdullahi, a paramedic with a sister UN agency stated that the humanitarian community lost irreplaceable staff in the mishap. “I lost very dear friends at Rann. The disaster could have been avoided,” she said.
The Rann tragedy
Death came to Rann in common hours. It arrived in a hail of fire, consuming children and parents while they queued for food and relief materials at the district’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp.
In the incident, a military jet dropped two bombs on the camp for displaced persons in Rann, in Kala-balge Local Government Area where thousands of displaced persons are housed, killing at least 50 persons and leaving about 200 others injured.
At the time of the attack, aid distribution was taking place and many women and children were killed, as well as at least nine humanitarian workers from the Nigerian Red Cross and the International Committee for the Red Cross.
Spokesman of the Nigerian Defence Headquarters, Rabe Abubakar, said the bombing was an error and that it occurred after troops received intelligence of movement by Boko Haram insurgents in the area.
The Nigerian military remembers Rann bombing like the brute in a recurring nightmare. But medical aid staff, Samuel Suleiman, like Wangae, remembers the bombing like the animal trap that decapitated the Huntsman in the fabled wild lands.
Suleiman was one of the many people that got wounded during the military airstrikes on Rann, on January 17. Thousands of displaced people had taken refuge in Rann and the MSF had just begun working there a few days before the attack.
I was few metres away from where the first bombing took place. The bomb exploded very close to the military barracks. Instantly, I knew we were under attack but everybody thought it was Boko Haram. I took off immediately as fast as my feet could carry me. I never knew I was hurt until I got to safe haven. A bomb shrapnel lodged in my arm, causing me to bleed profusely. I was lucky to get medical aid on time – Suleiman.
Meredith Wakanda, 26, is a Food Security Analyst with another UN aid agency in Borno. When she is not accompanying missions to deliver relief materials and other assistance to fringe communities caught up in the anti-terrorism war in Nigeria’s northeast, she lives in the State capital with her parents.
According to Wakama, it’s dangerous crisscrossing war-ravaged communities in Borno. Due to the demands of her job, Wakanda, a native of Borno of the Kanuri tribe, constantly shuttles between the WFP office in the State capital and the several IDP settlements and war-ravaged communities across the northeast.
“You see things that bring tears to your eyes. I have seen a lot of anguish and I have experienced great misery by being witness to it all. But what keeps me going is the fact that by my work, I bring succour into the lives of many,” she said.
Living and working in a war zone
The life of an aid worker is a gallery of scars and perilous exploits. The absence of electricity, potable water, food, provisions, telephones and other relief materials can make the simplest tasks and routines cumbersome.
The average war zone assignment lasts from six to 12 months. This accords the international aid worker ample time to know the country of his assignment as well as neighbouring countries.
The Nation findings revealed that local and international aid workers are often forced to work and live in extreme circumstances. Many of them, field operatives in, particular, live where they work. This, according to a Field Security Officer for the WFP, could be anywhere from camping outdoors in a food drop zone to a refugee registration area or food distribution centre.
‘Our work would be easier if the roads are good’
The hazards of international aid work range from the possibility of sudden death via targeted attacks, abduction to extreme living conditions and travel on bad roads. For instance, Margaret Haruna, a staff of UN food agency’s Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) unit dreads visiting certain regions of Borno despite her passion for humanitarian work.
“Our work would be easier if the roads are good and there is dependable security stationed across the access routes. When we have to deliver food and other relief materials in extreme circumstances, we do an airdrop from a hovering aircraft because it is usually the safest bet. Sometimes, the aircraft lands in the middle of the conflict zone. From there, we disembark to offer food, nutritional supplements and other relief materials to the needy,” she said.
Every day unfurls with fresh challenges for the aid worker. For instance, while staff of the United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) devote time and efforts to addressing the education needs of minors, field operatives of the World Food Programme (WFP), start by registering people in need of food assistance. The registration process may last for four days or more depending on the number of beneficiaries in need of. Staff of the agency also assist with helicopter food drops of cereal sacks, special food for kids and vegetable oil in regions where it is impossible to make the deliveries by road.
At the backdrop of the efforts, aid workers maintain utmost vigilance, instituting security measures that would aid early warning signals and evacuation process in the event of an attack by dreaded terrorist groups.
Bearing in mind that an attack could be carried out at any time, Field Security Officers of international aid groups adopt proactive measures. Before any mission, they communicate with local authorities, assess the security in the area, and equip themselves with a thorough knowledge of the area so that in a case of emergency evacuation, they can relocate their teams to safety.
The hardest part of the job
Sporadic attacks by Boko Haram continually slow the place of development work in the region as aid workers are often forced to flee humanitarian projects in the region’s hot zones for the safety of the capital cities. But even the capital cities offer minimal refuge to the humanitarian staff. Many are forced to adhere to strict safety rules to avoid targeted attacks by Boko Haram.
For instance, the United Nation’s multilateral agencies provide accommodation to staff in highly guarded hotels and official residencies. Aid workers also have to avoid night crawling and thus retire indoors early in the evening every day.
“Many of us do not venture out after 6.00pm. If there is no urgent relief work to be done anywhere, we retire indoors. It’s the safest bet,” said Adeola Adekunle, a UN Communications Associate from Lagos.
Adekunle revealed that when things seem lonely and bleak, thoughts of his wife and son get him going through the odds. “I console myself by calling my wife. I urge her to put my son on the phone so I can speak to him too. The possibility of seeing them soon keeps me hopeful and happy,” he revealed.
There is no fixed closure in humanitarian work. Aid workers across Nigeria’s northeast revealed that each unit does not rest until its members are safely tucked in bed in their highly cordoned residences. “We are in perpetual active mode morning through the night, weekday through weekends because conflicts or problems arise without respect for routine or timelines,” disclosed Ahmadu Salkada, a Field Security Officer in Yobe State.
When missions are extended beyond specified timelines, the wellbeing of staff become threatened due to food and water shortages, especially in conflict zones where the basic amenities and conveniences are scarce. In such extreme situations, aid workers device ingenious strategies for survival.
The mayhem in retrospect
Borno State, officially acknowledged as the “State of Peace” is undoubtedly the worst hit by the insurgency. Prior to the emergence of the incumbent government, aid workers fled the State. Until their flight, Borno was home to several high profile domestic and international aid agencies and personnel.
It will be recalled that when Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) moved into Baga, a town nearly 200 kilometres northeast of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, the organization then reported that it was treating 80 patients a day; half of them children.
But after five gunmen hijacked one of their vehicles along with medical supplies and other equipment, MSF abandoned the project.
The surge in terrorist attacks by Boko Haram worsened the humanitarian crisis in the region, which meant that more aid workers were needed to help mitigate the effect of the insurgency.
In 2014 alone, more than 500,000 persons are estimated to have been displaced from their homes due to terrorist attacks. In the first half of last year, civilian deaths are estimated at over 2,000. Since the insurgency started in 2009, more than 5,000 persons are believed to have been killed.
Before the situation deteriorated, the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) served as a regional hub for development programmes, conferences and training workshops. Such projects had to be abandoned as Boko Haram increased its conquests and stranglehold on Borno and neighbouring Yobe and Adamawa states.
Things got quite bad that in February 2013, two vaccinators were murdered in Borno by Boko Haram. In the same month, three North Korean doctors and health workers were murdered in Yobe State. Boko Haram went on to establish its stranglehold on 23 of Borno’s 27 local government areas. The situation has since improved as the Nigerian military has reclaimed Borno’s 23 local councils from Boko Haram’s stranglehold.
UNHAS to the rescue
In parts of north-east Nigeria, where the volatile security environment has disrupted overland transport routes, air travel is often the only practical solution for getting humanitarian assistance to people in need. Coupled with the challenges of extreme poverty, underdevelopment and climate change in the Lake Chad Region, years of violent conflict between the government and Boko Haram have thrust the country into one of the most acute humanitarian crises in the world. Today 26 million people are affected and 13.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance according to UN estimates.
The United Nations Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), managed by the WFP, is the only provider of air services in this complex emergency. Using fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, UNHAS enables humanitarian organizations to reach thousands of people in hard-to-access and isolated areas, delivering life-saving food, vaccines, medicines and medical equipment.
The agency enables humanitarian organizations to reach people in remote, cut-off locations with in-kind and cash assistance.
In 2016 alone, UNHAS Nigeria transported 14,700 passengers and 53,000 kilograms of light cargo on behalf of 64 humanitarian organizations, including NGOs such as the International Rescue Committee, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Action Contre la Faim.
Action Contre la Faim Country Director in Nigeria, Yannick Pouchalan revealed how UNHAS has allowed his staff to reach deep field locations from their base in the capital, Abuja. This service makes short field trips possible, allowing aid workers to continually monitor and improve their operations.
Maie Sahoury, the only female UNHAS Aviation Officer in Nigeria also enthused that joining the WFP-UNHAS family was a life-changing experience for her, on both personal and professional levels.
“Sometimes we work for weeks non-stop, facing many challenges, yet the idea that doing your job will save someone’s life is a priceless reward that compensates for everything,” she said.
A deadly paralysis
Red cross officials carry a body at the site of a bomb explosion in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Friday, July 31, 2015 . A woman suicide bomber killed many people at a crowded market early Friday in a blast that thundered across the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, witnesses said. (AP Photo/Jossy Ola)
At the backdrop of humanitarian efforts in Nigeria’s northeast and other parts of the world, extreme risks and threats are paralysing the operations of humanitarian aid workers, thereby preventing them from helping more people in some of the biggest war zones, according to a recent UN-backed report.
“Conflict parties’ lack of respect for the fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law and the brutality and volatility of today’s armed conflicts make it extremely difficult and dangerous for these brave aid workers to deliver humanitarian assistance and protection in complex emergencies,” said UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien, whose Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) co-produced the report.
‘Presence and Proximity: To Stay and Deliver, Five Years On,’ produced by OCHA, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Jindal School of International Affairs in India, is based on interviews with more than 2,000 international and national aid workers, and includes case studies on humanitarian aid in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Syria and Yemen.
Danger pay
There is no gainsaying that humanitarian aid workers are exposed to intractable hardships in the course of their work. To compensate them for their efforts, they are entitled to certain mobility and hardship arrangements. The intent is to offer a comprehensive approach to compensation for service in the field and provide incentives for staff to accept assignments to the difficult and sometimes dangerous locations where staffing and effective programme delivery is often the most challenging.
The Danger Pay (DP) for instance, is a special allowance established for internationally and locally recruited staff who are required to work in locations where very dangerous conditions prevail. The Danger Pay is also given where United Nations staff or premises are at high risk of
becoming collateral damage in a war or active armed conflict. The allowance is normally granted for periods of up to three consecutive months at a time. It is lifted when dangerous conditions are deemed to have abated.
‘I don’t know if I got it from the marathon sex or from the three husbands I married’
Fifteen-year-old reveals terrifying details about her life as an insurgent bride
Fatima Kabir, a 15-year-old ex-wife of the factional leader of Boko Haram, Maman Nur, said she was infected with HIV/AIDS after she was forced to have marathon sex with many sect members at the group’s Sigil Huda camp, Sambisa Forest.
Kabir and her 14-year-old accomplice, Amina Shua’ibu were arrested by officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Borno State command on Friday night. At the time of her arrest, she was also discovered to be two months pregnant for a sect member.
Kabir told The Nation in an interview in Maiduguri, Borno capital, that she was an ex-wife wife to Nur and that she was introduced to the group by her brother, Ibrahim Fadagana, in 2013.
“My brother took us from Maiduguri to Sambisa forest where he introduced us to Abubakar Shekau. Things did not go well at the camp as most of the people did not like Shekau’s brutal treatment of abductees and sect members in the camp. There was a lot of death in the camp. Children died of dehydration and malnutrition.
“So, there was a lot of disagreement between Shekau and Mamman Nur and Nur refused to accept Shekau’s policies. So they broke up. My brother (Fadagana) was a close friend to Mamman Nur, so he stood as my father and got me married to him (Mamman Nur). I was married to him in 2013. I was 12 years old at the period,” she said.
Kabir lamented her experience as Mamman Nur’s wife: “On the wedding night, Mamman Nur forced himself into me and destroyed my vagina. He infected me with Vesico Vaginal Fistulae (VVF). I was sick for a while, but I became better.
“In that same year, 2013, he left me to participate in an arms and military training program in Libya. I couldn’t wait for him, so I immediately got married to Habib, a member from Bauchi State.
“Habib later ran away because he was marked for execution. He was suspected to be an informant for the Nigerian government. So he deserted me and absconded from the camp.
“I later got married again to one Ali Bama. He was not a Commanding Officer. He was just an ordinary member like the others.
Shu’aibu
Until her arrest in Maiduguri, Bama took good care of her. “He has protected me and provided food for me at our Sagil Huda camp in Sambisa Forest. I am presently carrying his two months pregnancy,” she revealed.
Life in Sagil Huda was very difficult “especially for us (women),” stressed Kabir. “The men always sleep in the afternoon and do marathon sex with all the girls for the whole night. Only those that are married are safe.
“At a point I became sick, so a French doctor came to check on me. He gave me some drugs and said I must be taking it from time to time.
“I learnt that I was infected with HIV/AIDS. I don’t know if I got it from the marathon sex or from the three husbands I married. My current husband, Bama, was also taking his own drugs just like me before I left our base. We are both infected,” she said.
Kabir said she fled Sagil Huda in the wake of the Nigerian Military Joint Task Force (JTF)’s military assault on their base in Sambisa Forest.
“We ran away from Sagil Huda because the army came and stormed our camp and killed many of our members. Right now, my mission is to go and meet my brother Fadagana, he is at Kangarwa with Mamman Nur. I have Mamman Nur’s phone number, I have been communicating with him. My plan is to go and meet him,” she said.
Kabir and Shu’aibu were arrested at the motor park in Maiduguri after Shu’aibu’s husband abandoned them there on the pretext of getting an accommodation for them in the state capital.
Ibrahim Abdullahi, the NSCDC Commandant, Borno State Command, stated that Kabir’s case is a clear indication that HIV/AIDS has hit Boko Haram’s camp. He bemoaned Kabir’s predicament, stressing that she was very hostile at her arrest. She reportedly called NSCDC operatives at the state command “infidels waiting to die and go to hell.”
“She will be handed over to the military for proper investigation,” he said.
[dropcap style=”square” color=”#ffffff” bgcolor=”#000000″]T[/dropcap]he evening streaks with heat and casual sand flake; Borno’s plague in the month of March.
As the night wears on, the party of chiefs dissolves to a trickle. General Officers Commanding (GOCs) saunter out of the thermo-induced chill of the Nigerian Army situation room, like rivulets trickling through a cottage roof, into Borno’s rising temperature.
Most of the generals are long gone now. Some wait impatiently outside, but General Tukur Yusuf Buratai, the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff (COAS), adjusts on his seat and clasps his hands.
He thinks of the ‘others’ who will be forever absent from future sessions because they won’t make it to be ‘General.’ Buratai bemoans those who would never partake of the food, laughter and the Nigeria Army’s philosophy of cartridges and buckshot.
He remembers the gallant foot soldier and the officer who died fighting and defending him. He also remembers the Brigadier-General whose life rapidly ebbed, in the hail of terrorist sect, Boko Haram’s deadly bullets.
A deadly encounter
Buratai recollects in sad, measured words, the brutal happenstance that nearly cost Nigeria its number one military General and marksman. “I was with them and my convoy was ambushed by Boko Haram. Instead of withdrawing back to Maiduguri, I said, ‘No! We are in this together, I can’t go back. We must all go together to clear the ambush,” reveals Buratai.
Buratai wines and dines with the troops on the frontlines to boost their morale
[quote font_size=”18″ color=”#000000″ bgcolor=”#ddaa5d” bcolor=”#dd3333″ arrow=”yes”]No! We must advance to clear them!’ I said. ‘’So I advanced with them and that was how we cleared the ambush. If the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) does not turn back, who would turn and run from such an ambush? I advanced with the troops and it paid off.
Unfortunately, we lost two soldiers; one of them was an officer. One other soldier, a Brigadier-General, got wounded in the attack.[/quote]
Varied accounts of the incident flooded the traditional and new media in its wake, but Buratai’s narrative of the encounter elicits the passing tribute of a sigh. The incident, according to the COAS, was one of the major turning points in the country’s war against Boko Haram; that the Chief of Army Staff was advancing to visit the troops at the war front and Boko Haram attacked him in an ambush made good read. But that he refused to retreat to the safety of his guest house in Maiduguri and instead, advanced with the troops to ‘clear the ambush’ resonates even as you read, as the best of military legend.
The legend is true. Buratai did lead an assault against Boko Haram, under hostility and intense gunfire. Boko Haram militants struck at his convoy about 45 kilometres or 28 miles east of Borno’s capital, Maiduguri. General Buratai had been visiting troops to encourage them and boost their morale in their fight against the terrorists.
But between the villages of Mafa and Dikwa, remnants of Boko Haram laid an ambush on the entourage of the chief of army staff. The army killed 10 of the terrorists and captured five. Two soldiers got killed and five were wounded in the ambush.
Being an army chief is no walk in the park. Even for Buratai, the task may seem challenging. Still, it is the ultimate job. It is the spiky tip of the spear overseeing the men and women bearing the rifles and laying down their lives that others might live.
From his perch at the Nigeria Army Headquarters, it could be hard to make out the regular people: the infantry soldiers and officers serving as buffer and hauling themselves as human shields against the hail of enemy bullets, that Nigeria might live.
It could be dicey taking the lead and even more challenging to earn the troops’ respect and sustain it. The detached army chief would emphasise the gaps between foot soldiers and the highest command. From his high office, he would see underlings as disposable human integers and the gallant men and women slugging it out with Boko Haram on the nation’s fringes, could seem like mites in a gutter, in his estimation of things. But Buratai detests such traditional military authority stereotype.
“None should apply to the Nigeria Army. Not under my command,” he states in kind and by language of his gangly frame.
Buratai would not be the over-indulgent general with tired girth sitting in his oversized Abuja office, to command the troops. He knows other ways to exert a commanding presence. He flaunts no devious wile or exaggerated gift of the garb. The Nigerian COAS lacks the contrived finesse and intensity of character so common among men with oversized public offices. His arguments non-partisan; they are disciplined and well grounded in reality. Buratai doesn’t bluff in search of depth. He’s careful and pragmatic, which makes sense because he spent most of his career as an infantry soldier and officer.
He’s almost reticent yet confident which could be confusing. But therein subsists the peculiar riddle of his persona. Buratai doesn’t unravel to middling eye and mind. He doesn’t do the high society party circuit because he is not a social butterfly. He prefers to eat at home with his wife when he’s not breaking bread and maasa (rice cake) in the trenches with the troops. Then he gets back to work – because Tukur Buratai is Type-A-workaholic.
When conversation segues to the ongoing war against Boko Haram tagged Operation Lafiya Dole, Buratai glows from inside out. “My greatest fulfilment is with the progress that has been made in the war against Boko Haram since I resumed as the Chief of Army Staff,” he says.
‘The situation before we came in’
“We came at a time when truly the challenge of the insurgency was very high. It was at its peak. There is no gainsaying that some progress had been made before we came in. But the progress that was made before we came in was being overtaken by the virtual resurgence of Boko Haram terrorist group.
“At the time we came, there were only four local governments that were not under the Boko Haram terrorist group’s control out of about 27 local governments in Borno. Same in Yobe state; two local governments were still under Boko Haram’s influence. That was the situation we met when we came in July 2015.
“As at today, those two local governments in Yobe state have been reclaimed from Boko Haram. And in Borno, all the 23 LGAs that were under the influence and control of Boko Haram have been liberated and they’ve been effectively put under the control of the elected government. The areas that are remaining are just the peripheral, that lies along the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. And Chad and Niger borders as well. No single local government is under the control of Boko Haram. To me, this is a major achievement and source of fulfilment,” enthuses Buratai.
Buratai thinks too little of Boko Haram. According to him, the terrorist sect has been substantially degraded. He said: “We just completed the small arms championship in Sambisa forest; they said they were coming to disrupt the exercise but we’ve not seen them come close to that area. This shows that the Nigerian military is fully in control of the area and the situation.”
The improvement in the troops’ morale also gives him cause for fulfilment. “At the time we took over, there was apprehension. There was disquiet. There was uncertainty and the basic requirements in terms of uniform and protective gears that should be readily available to the soldiers, particularly those engaging in combat, were particularly lacking. We had our troops putting on the American camouflage among others. The situation has since changed.
“Since we took over, our troops have had access to the necessary uniforms, kit and protective gear. Although we have not achieved 100 percent, we have achieved about 85 percent success in correcting the situation. We are still working hard to ensure that we achieve 100 percent in providing our troops’ basic needs,” argued Buratai.
The COAS stressed that, “Through the improvement of our troops’ basic training needs, promotion and welfare, we have been able to achieve greater improvement in our troops’ morale. You can see, our troops are standing firm and penetrating into the Sambisa forest and other difficult areas that we’ve not been able to penetrate before.”
Buratai believes that “leadership is all about the people you lead.” Thus “I take the soldiers, the troops in general, as the most important aspect of soldiering. Their welfare and the general administration of the troops is key,” he says.
The army chief argued that, “When you are a leader, you cannot just sit in your office without making contact with the people you lead. I make contact and I think that is what broke the jinx. I don’t just sit down in my office. I started by visiting the troops. I went into the forest to see them. I visited them down in their trenches to talk to them and listen to their worries. The contact I made and still make really makes the difference.
“Through that contact, I was able to see them, hear them and understand them. I got to know their individual challenges, unit challenges and indeed, the general operational challenges. And then I addressed them. Those that could not be addressed immediately, I took them back to the office and assigned their resolution to the relevant departments. I did not stop there. I spent the nights with them right in their trenches, right inside the bush, in whatever location I visited them,” he states.
Buratai didn’t just happen to be the most powerful soldier in Nigeria. His path to the top never laid out in flat miles. He got there by dint of hard work. Perhaps it’s the meticulousness by which he approaches his work and the gestures by which he honours it that stood him out.
Indeed, very few Generals excite the splendid tribute of a cheer in the wake of their most glorious feats. Nonetheless, Buratai strikingly commands relentless tributes of ceaseless cheers by his exploits. These days, the homage reverberates as deafening applause for the man who taught Nigeria and her African neighbours to trust in the soul and practical depth of his command of the armed forces.
The man, Buratai
If Buratai doesn’t fulfill the ubiquitous stereotype of the political army chief, it’s because he never purported to be a politician and his story was never scripted to satisfy such typecast. The outlines of the story are, however, familiar: Born to Alhaji Yusuf Buratai, an ex-serviceman who joined the West African Army in 1942 and fought the Second World War, Buratai hails from a lineage of warriors.
An accomplished infantry senior officer, Buratai was commissioned in 1983 and he has had multiple command, administrative and instructional appointments over his 35 years illustrious career in the Nigerian Army.
He gained admission into the prestigious Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna, as member of the 29 Regular Combatant Course on January 3, 1981 and got commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on December 17, 1983, into the Infantry Corps of the Nigerian Army. Afterwards, he served in the 26 Amphibious Battalion Elele, Port Harcourt, Rivers State and as a Military Observer at the United Nations Verification Mission II in Angola. Buratai also served as administrative officer at the State House, Abuja; 82 Motorized Battalion; 81 Battalion, Bakassi Peninsular; Army Headquarters Garrison, Abuja, before he became a Directing Staff at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Jaji; there he earned the prestigious “Pass Staff College Dagger” (psc(+) appellation.
Buratai subsequently, served at Army Headquarters (AHQ) Dept of Army Policy and Plans, Abuja. He was also the Assistant Chief of Staff Administrative Matters, HQ Infantry Centre Jaji. Additionally, he was again at the Armed Forces Command and Staff College as Director Dept of Land Warfare from where he was appointed Commander 2 Brigade, Port Harcourt, doubling as Commander, Sector 2 JTF Operation Pulo Shield.
Upon promotion to the rank of Major General, he was appointed Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Infantry, Jaji; thereafter he was appointed Director of Procurement DHQ before being appointed Force Commander of the newly reconstituted Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) under the auspices of the Lake Chad Basin Commission and Benin Republic an appointment he held till he became Chief of Army Staff, his operational deployments included Operation Harmony IV in the Bakassi Peninsular, Operation Mesa, Operation Pulo Shield, Operation Safe Conduct, MNJTF, Op Zaman Lafiya and Operation Lafiya Dole.
His qualifications include the Nigerian Defence Academy Certification of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in History. He also has a Master of Arts Degree in History and Master of Philosophy Degree in Security Studies.
A highly decorated senior officer, Lt. Gen. Buratai’s honours and awards include the Nigerian Army Medal, Forces Service Star, Meritorious Service Star, Distinguished Service Star and the Grand Service Star. Others include, Pass Staff Course Dagger (psc(+)), National Defence College (Bangladesh), Field Command Medal, Training Support Medal and the United Nations Medal for Angolan Verification Medal II.
He is a member of Historical Society of Nigeria. Lt Gen Buratai loves farming, squash racket and jogging.
For the military to gain upper hand and sustain its successes in the fight against terrorism, he said: “We require the support and cooperation of the government, civil societies and every other sector of the country.”
According to him, “Although the military has the constitutional responsibility to defend the country from external aggression and protect its territorial integrity, it can only do this if the resources of the country, government effort and citizenry support are tailored to help it in its work. By and large, war is everybody’s responsibility and the achievement of peace too.
[quote font_size=”18″ color=”#000000″ bgcolor=”#ddaa5d” bcolor=”#dd3333″ arrow=”yes”]The Nigerian military is guided by rules and regulations and code of conduct. And the military conforms to these rules. No one can come from outside to direct us or teach us how to carry out our operations. This is where the problem is.
There is no way we can go beyond our rules of engagement which are provided for by the instrumentality of the constitution. The NGO’s criticism is a misplaced one. Such an NGO by its actions emboldens the terrorist group and indirectly speak in the terrorists’ interests – Buratai.[/quote]
Despite his public office, it is a private space that Tukur Buratai occupies. It’s no dreamscape of gilded tapestry, political harlotry and fresco-style murals of exaggerated nobility. Buratai does not pander to the pomp and pageantry of random socialites neither does he seek to conform to any political clique’s social barometer. He will not fulfill the showman with big flash and little substance stereotype.
His passion gives him strength and his unabashed humility enables him to connect to folk too many of his peers may dismiss as ‘common people.’ There are no common people in Buratai’s life. Every soldier is a hero and heroine, deserving honour and acclaim in the estimation of the Nigerian state.
Being a soldier is no easy task. Ask Buratai: in a few months, he did what his predecessors couldn’t do in four years. He attempted the impossible and achieved results with defiant flair. But the hulking COAS would tell you that the victory is never his alone but a monumental achievement made possible by the gallantry of his troops and the Nigerian Armed Forces. He would tell you: “Had President Muhammadu Buhari not empowered the Nigerian military with necessary funding and other support, our victories would be impossible.”
Troops speak of his unpretentious warmth and interest in their affairs. “Oga (Buratai) will tell you: Gentlemen, you know this land, you are better trained. You’ve seen it all, done it all. Let’s go get these braggers. Let’s clear them off, that we may go home to spend time with our wives and kids.” Thus is the person of Tukur Buratai.
Different soldiers project different reflections and definitions of Buratai. Sometimes, almost every adjective becomes a cliché in describing the Nigerian Chief of Army Staff. His leadership culture, anti-terrorism campaign, strings of victories and confrontation with Boko Haram offer a very colourful picture.
Cocksure, driven and unapologetically blunt, Buratai sought to achieve the impossible: the liberation of Borno from Boko Haram’s stranglehold. That had to be difficult. It was. Buratai had to descend into the trenches with his men. He broke bread with them and transformed the Borno theatre of war into an unusual victors’ space founded on purely patriotic needs.
Quietly but remarkably, the army chief divorced the military from previous afflictions of public apathy and scorn. He inspired a military culture characteristic of the quintessential patriot soldier, all in bid to recreate a Nigerian military with a different story; a gripping yarn founded on patriotism and culture indigenous to the people they are meant to protect. It’s the stuff gallant soldiers are made of.
This is an exclusive investigative report by The Nation’s Olatunji Ololade, Associate Editor, who spent several weeks in war-ravaged parts of Borno State.
Find the teaser below and the full report in The Nation on Saturday.
[quote font_size=”14″ color=”#000000″ bgcolor=”#dda858″ bcolor=”#dd3333″ arrow=”yes”]A former commander of Boko Haram fighters has sensationally revealed how he forcibly married two of the over 250 Chibok school girls abducted by the terror sect in April 2014.
And the Christian –turned Islamist fighter, Joseph David, now says the two Chibok girls were part of the benefits that accrued to his office as a Boko Haram commander.
Ironically, David himself was kidnapped by the sect from his native Mubi, Adamawa State, aged 22.
He claimed to be a student of the Adamawa State Polytechnic, Yola at the time.
Now 25 and in security custody after he was captured by soldiers battling the sect, David said he was placed on a salary of N500, 000 per month or its foreign equivalent.
With that kind of hefty salary, he could afford the luxury of three wives.
The Chibok girls came soon after he married his first wife, Faridah.
Life in Sambisa Forest seemed to be getting rosier for him by the day until he incurred the wrath of his “commander-in-chief” – Abubakar Shekau.[/quote]
There were corn rows on the head of the girl that exploded in Muna Dalti. There was a colourful bead on her wrist too. She probably loved to play dress-up and look good. Everybody forgets these bits of her. Folk remember her as the ‘vixen’ who flicked a switch and blew up, into a puddle of flesh and bone fragments. No one cares if she was ever innocent or raised in virtue. The village is thankful that she took no innocent life, save her teenage accomplices. Their carcass lay strewn about the rustic community in Maiduguri, Borno State. Their innards and blood spatter sully the village even as you read.
Lying in the dust few metres from her shredded mate, the girl with the cornrows evoked the dread that wild weeds induce at the base of shoots. Two hours after her ‘sister’ and agent of a terrorist group, Boko Haram, detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Muna vehicle park, injuring eight people and burning 13 freight trucks, the girl with the cornrows sauntered into Muna Dalti with another ‘sister.’
Time was 2:00 a.m. and they looked suspicious to the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) patrolling the area. When the latter accosted them, they said they were waiting for their husbands. Of course, their responses were unsatisfactory; having seen eight of their comrades incapacitated by a girl strapped to an IED few hours earlier, around 11.30 pm to be precise, the CJTF suspected foul play.
Hence the vigilante group ordered the girls to come with them. But rather than comply, one of the girls fiddled desperately with a device under her dress. Instantly, the CJTF scurried for cover, shooting sporadically in the air.
‘How I became a suicide bomber’
In the ensuing melee, the girl with the cornrows reached under her dress and did what her mate couldn’t. She flicked the switch on an IED strapped to her body.
In a second, she blew herself to bits and decapitated her mate, who was standing close by.
Ka’ana Hawaye, a CJTF officer in Muna Dalti, said the girls were on a mission to kill. “The bomb blast at 11.30 pm put us on red alert. So, when we saw them, we suspected trouble. But we made sure they didn’t achieve their aim. They couldn’t kill anyone here,” he said.
Corroborating him, CJTF officer, Muhammadu Idris, stated that after the first bomb was detonated by the girl at Muna park, CJTF officers in the area became more vigilant.
However, Ba’ani Aliko, a lieutenant in the group, disclosed that there would have been more casualties had his team not stepped back from the girls in the nick of time.
Further findings by The Nation revealed that officers of the Nigerian Army killed about six members of Boko Haram at the Mafa military checkpoint few kilometres away, barely one hour before the first bomber struck in Muna motor park. They were killed about nine kilometres from the state capital while they tried to storm into town.
Video: ‘Those who come and throw bombs’
However, as Muna town heaved a sigh of relief, tragedy struck again as the three teenage girls, who had successfully snuck into town, detonated their explosives. The first girl struck around 11:30 pm, Thursday, February 17, at Muna motor park while the other attack occurred in Muna Dalti around 2:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 18.
The Muna bombers apparently succeeded where insurgent mates, Zainab and Amina Yusuf, failed. Amina, 17, was intercepted while her co-bomber, 15-year-old Zainab, was killed as she tried to ram into motorists queuing to buy fuel and detonate a bomb at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) mega station along Damboa road in Maiduguri, on Tuesday, February 7.
The girls were intercepted by men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), soon after they arrived in Maiduguri on orders from Boko Haram.
My story, by bomber
As she recounted her experience, Amina’s eyes glistened with hope and gratification. She spoke in a crisp, clear tenor, caressing the strands of a severed ribbon from her veil. She fingered the thread and slipped it through her lips with gratifying immersion, all the piteous miseries of her life seemingly summoned in her wiry hands.
Her face, hard and weary from strife, provided a soiled, pale background to her gaunt eyes. Her eyes, twitching open and close in rhythm with the groove where her lips met with the frayed strands seemed in search of something; comfort perhaps.
Occasionally, she removed the threads from her mouth to answer questions, the words leaping from her lips as if she meant to exhale in one breath, the agony interred in her buried narratives. With submissive firmness, she revealed that she and Zainab were on a mission from Gobarawa, a Boko Haram enclave along Borno’s Alagarno axis, to kill people. She said she was abducted by the terrorists in 2015 in Madagali, Adamawa. From there, she was taken to Sambisa where she was held hostage for a while before being transferred to Gobarawa.
Life in Gobarawa
“My younger brother and sisters Umar, Fatima, fauziya, Abbas, Maryam and Faiza, were all held hostage and married off to Boko Haram men in Gambarawa. But my father and mother were all killed when they tried to escape with us from the camp where we were held hostage in Gobarawa.
“All the people in Gobarawa are Boko Haram. They are many and they all had sophisticated weapons, motorcycles and vehicles which they use to operate,” said Amina. The teenager revealed that when life became too hard in Gobarawa, her captors resorted to drastic measures.
“They usually go out to snatch food from locals and bring us food. We don’t have grinders but we relied on stone to grind sorghum. We pounded sorghum with stone to make food,” she said.
In Gobarawa, Amina, like several child hostages, was married off to a member of the sect. “I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father,” she said.
I am also married to a Boko Haram Commander, an Amir, who has killed more than 100 people, including his mother and father
Suicide mission to Maiduguri
It took Amina and Zainab three days to get to Maiduguri, travelling on a motorcycle. She said: “We were directed by the sect members to detonate our explosives anywhere we saw any form of gathering…They said if we press the button, the bomb would explode and we will automatically go to heaven. I was scared, so, I told them that I could not detonate any explosive. But Zainab said she would do it. So, they said if Zainab detonated her own, it would serve the purpose.”
However, things didn’t go according to plan in Maiduguri. At 6.45 a.m., Amina and Zainab were accosted in the city, after a bean-cake seller alerted NSCDC operatives about their suspicious moves. But while Amina balked from the mission, Zainab decided to go ahead with it. She ignored Amina’s counsel that they flee into the city and seek help.
Amina tossed her explosive away at the point of arrest
“I demobilised my own explosive right from when we were about to sleep in a nearby town en route Maiduguri. I had only N200 with me. I told Zainab to come along with me to town instead of blowing the explosive and killing herself for the sake of nothing. I told her that with the N200 they gave us, we can go to town to meet somebody I know.”
But Zainab rejected Amina’s counsel and proceeded with the mission. Initially, she attempted to detonate it at the bean-cake seller’s roadside stall but she later decided to attack the NNPC mega station in the area because it contained a greater crowd and the promise of greater casualties.
Fortunately, the bean-cake seller noticed their suspicious moves and male accomplices and she alerted NSCDC officers in the vicinity. Promptly, the latter marched up to the girls to interrogate them. But no sooner did they accost them than their male handlers disappear. Instantly, Amina revealed that she was strapped to a bomb. The security operatives scurried backwards and cocked their rifles to shoot. In the scuffle, Amina unstrapped her bomb and tossed it away.
“I already told them that I will not detonate my bomb; that was why I threw it away and handed myself over to the security. Zainab insisted on detonating her explosive. I don’t know why. I couldn’t say whether she was in her right senses,” said Amina.
Zainab ignored the NSCDC’s sharp orders that she stood down and proceeded to detonate the bomb. This attracted a warning shot from the NSCDC to her limbs. The shot was meant to demobilise her. But even while she writhed in a blood pool from her bleeding leg, the teenager stubbornly sought to detonate the bomb. This earned her a ‘kill-shot,’ this time around, from a soldier’s rifle. It was either Zainab’s life or the lives of several innocent folk citizens.
A disturbing trend
There is no gainsaying that Boko Haram radically changed the landscape of internal security in Nigeria when it launched the first suicide bombing in Nigeria, at the Police Headquarters in Abuja the Federal Capital territory on June 16, 2011. It’s 35-year-old male bomber, Mohammed Manga, detonated his explosive-laden car, killing more than five persons and destroying several cars. The group subsequently executed several attacks, involving the fitting of IEDs on its members, widely known as ‘suicide bombers’ and common means of transportation, including vehicles, motorcycles and tricycles.
However, on June 8, 2014, Boko Haram dispatched its first female operative, a teenage girl strapped to a bomb. She attacked the 301 Battalion Barracks of the Nigerian Army in Gombe State. The girl detonated the explosive concealed under her hijab, thus killing herself and a soldier.
By January 20, 2015, there have been a total of 17 attempted suicide bombings by underage and teenage girls in Nigeria; 15 of the attacks were successful. By January 2016, the documented attacks increased to 89. With this new experimentation, Boko Haram joined the ranks of terrorist groups that have incorporated women into their organisational profiles. Since the first attack, women and young girls between the ages of seven and 17, have been coerced into targeting civilians at markets, bus depots, fuel stations and mosques. The 89 attacks documented between June 2014 and January 2016, mostly of civilian soft targets, have been responsible for more than 1,200 deaths and an even greater number of injuries.
A disturbing trend, however, ensues with the terrorist sect’s increasing deployment of teenage girls to execute suicide bombings in Maiduguri, Borno State. Rescued girls experience stigmatisation from family and friends when they return home. One such survivor returned to Maiduguri after being freed by soldiers. But on arrival at home, her mother turned her over to the military after finding out that she had been trained as a suicide bomber.
The adoption of female suicide bombers is not especially surprising as an operational adaptation to increased state surveillance of the group’s activities; it has been a tactic adopted by secular and religious terrorist groups from Sri Lanka to Syria.
However, Boko Haram depends on female operatives disproportionately, relative to similar insurgencies; for example, the Tamil Tigers used 46 women over the course of 10 years, whereas Boko Haram has deployed over 151 females including underage girls in a little over a year.
Data from Beyond Chibok, a United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF) study, show that 44 children were used in suicide attacks in north-east Nigeria and neighbouring countries in 2015 alone.
The figures, released to mark the second anniversary of the abduction of over 270 girls from Chibok, show that children now account for nearly a fifth of all suicide bombers in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad. Thus between late 2014 and the end of 2016, the number of such attacks escalated to 151. In 2015, 89 of the attacks were carried out in Nigeria, 39 in Cameroon, 16 in Chad and seven in Niger.
Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, said children used in suicide bombings should not be seen as willing combatants. “Let us be clear: these children are victims, not perpetrators. Deceiving children and forcing them to carry out deadly acts has been one of the most horrific aspects of the violence in Nigeria and neighbouring countries,” he said.
There is more to the use of girl-bombers—Theatre Commander Gen. Leo Irabor
Leo Irabor
MAJOR-GENERAL Leo Irabor is the Theatre Commander (TC) of the anti-terrorism war, code name: “Operation Lafiya Dole (Peace by force).” He was appointed as the TC on March 18, 2016. In this exclusive interview with The Nation, he bares his mind on Boko Haram’s use of minors for suicide bombing and other issues related to the anti-terrorism war.
Operation Lafiya Dole
In respect of Operation Lafiya Dole, I was appointed here as the Theatre Commander on March 18, 2016. Before then, I resumed here on the 5th of January, 2016 as the then Theatre Commander. Two months later, I was appointed the Theatre Commander. So, I have been heading this operation for one year.
The military operation here is asymmetric. It is asymmetric because you really can’t tell who the enemy is. In a conventional setting, the belligerents are well defined. It is easy to identify them. You don’t need to do much to understand who the enemy is. More importantly, the belligerents have respect for the rules governing warfare. They respect the laws of war and the international human rights. But asymmetric wars like we have here in Borno, it becomes difficult to determine who the enemy is.
That the war has lasted this long is largely in part, because it is asymmetric in nature. The Nigerian military was not attuned to threats of this nature; a situation whereby the secret police should normally look into, you now get yourself involved in it.
But time has passed and we have been able to learn our lessons. And that is why you have been able to see the reversals that are occurring.
So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Making sense of the girl-child bombers
Anybody can be a suicide bomber. It all depends on what you assimilate. So, someone that calls himself or herself a suicide bomber, it all depends on what the fellow assimilates. Part of the transformation that we also found in this war is that, it became a war of ideology. So for me, I would say it’s a war of ideology rather than a religious war. It is a situation whereby a group of people are made to believe a certain falsehood. And that falsehood is repeated to them over and over until they begin to see it as the truth.
And that is precisely what Boko Haram leadership is trying to do with those in their fold. So, that’s why I said anybody can be a suicide bomber depending on what you assimilate.
So, who are those that they have engaged as suicide bombers? Those that are illiterate, those that are in their youth. I will not even call them youths. They engage children who cannot tell what life is; children who cannot tell right from wrong. Because they’ve been so wrongly indoctrinated, whatever their captors tell them is what they believe. They do their captors’ bidding. So far, our findings show that they are told that if they blow themselves up, they will go to heaven, and so on and so forth. I know that there is more to it. We are carrying out certain investigations and by the time we are done with them, you will know what our findings are.
Politics and War
Many have also tried to politicise the problem which, of course, is unfortunate. They are of the erroneous notion that the military must be involved in issues of politics. Yes, there is some school of thought that believe that war is politics by other means. But certainly not a war of this nature whereby all the contending forces are all nationals of Nigeria. For me, I believe that issues of war, issues of national security must not be relegated to politics. It is wrong to read meanings into military operations. It is wrong to think soldiers have ulterior motives for engaging in battle.
There is no military around the world that will say they are sufficient in all things, no. Rather you build, you learn, you re-align, you re-assess.
At some stage, people have also tried to make the war look like some religious crisis, which of course, has now been dispelled. They once attacked structures of a particular religious faith in order to make it seem like a religious crisis. That failed. Then it became an all-faith affair, where any structure that belonged to any faith and every creed were attacked by them. Then it dawned on the populace that, these are madmen. These are people that are deranged. Until it got to that level, the cooperation between the civil society and the military was very poor. So, as the threat transformed and the war transformed, the gaps between the understanding of the civil society and the military began to narrow. And so the narrowing of the gap means that minds at both ends came together.
That closing of gap also contributed immeasurably in seeing the establishment of what we now call the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF). It is because they now understand that they’ve got a part to play, it’s not just a military affair. That of course, also accounts for the successes we have recorded.
Threats and discipline
What we call ‘Table of equipment,’ ‘Table of organisation‘ takes into cognizance, the various factors, one of which is threat. What is the threat perception? Because of that setting, every military officer has at the back of his mind, a desire to honour the oath that he has pledged to. As a result of that, he cannot go against that oath. For those who may have reason to, that is why we have procedures to manage such situations. We have court-martial and so on to address such situations.
Beyond Operation Lafiya Dole
The minds of the troops are focused. We’ve been able to provide them the necessary tools. This is responsible for the success stories. And the military is being more proactive. Right now, I am looking beyond “Operation Lafiya Dole.” The military leadership is thinking of its aftermath. We are making assessments of what we need to do to prevent things from returning to how they used to be. We must do everything to educate people and sensitise them to their civic responsibilities. Governance is not for a small group of people in public offices. Every citizen is part of the government. And when citizens perform their civic responsibilities, they exercise their power as intrinsic part of government. Going to school to learn to read and write is only a part of education. It is not education in totality. Societies are regulated. Every society is regulated and that regulation is brought about by laws. Societies have laws that should be respected. People must understand that.
The media challenge
When those who know go to misinform others, then there is a problem. This is where the press comes in. The press shouldn’t misinform simply because they believe they have freedom of speech. Freedom of speech comes with great responsibility and the press should always understand and respect that. You cannot infringe on my rights simply because you wish to exercise your freedom of speech. I am an agent of government and that state is working to guarantee the territorial security and integrity of the state but some people are of the wrong impression that they could be an impediment to me.
It will be wrong for anyone to think that if he becomes an obstacle in my way, I will be forced to placate him or settle him in order to become more effective. If that happens, then he becomes an obstacle even to his own security.
And there are others who are also being used to disrupt activities and our peace-keeping efforts. There is no friend in the world. In reality, there is no friend. What exists around the world is interest. What scholars call ‘enlightened self-interest.’
To tame a suicide culture…
The suicide bombers are usually brainwashed. There is nobody who was born hardened. No child is born as a suicide bomber. Situations cause them to harden. There must be a total reorientation of our youths and reestablishment of our good values. Our education system should be overhauled and broadened to produce more progressively literate and responsible citizens. You don’t go to school simply because you wish to get a certificate and get a job. That is not what education does for you.
Education should help you to think logically and to be able to identify alternatives when you see them. It should empower you to understand issues and perspectives to an issue. It should enable you to discern between good and evil, right and wrong.
A well-educated youth will be empowered to shun evil and embrace progress. Education helps you to develop your conscience and become a better patriot. A national reorientation of our children, youth and people will conscientize our nation towards a more positive and progressive direction.
When we as a people have a commonality of values that are well defined, we won’t argue or bicker about it. As the Americans have the American dream, we should also have the Nigerian dream. It’s about time we decided on and evolved a sustainable Nigerian dream.
Shared values will always unite us. A national reorientation geared towards truly positive objectives will make us better citizens and people.
Why girl-bombers?
The value underage girls add to terrorism is very clear, according to Mia Bloom, a Professor of Communication at Georgia University and Hilary Matfess, a research analyst at the National Defence University’s Center for Complex Operations and a member of the Nigeria Social Violence Project (NSVP) at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
While Bloom addresses the lure of suicide terrorism in her books, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror and Bombshell: Women and Terrorism, she and Matfess recently took a holistic look at the trend in Northern Nigeria.
“The incorporation of women into Boko Haram’s activities,” they opine, “builds upon a history of tactical experimentation, undertaken in response to cyclical government responses and opportunities posed by regional trends in arms availability. The symbolism of female-led attacks has been a means by which
‘My Boko Haram husband killed his father and mother’
Boko Haram has distinguished itself from similar movements and local rivals. Understanding Boko Haram’s use of women is particularly critical, as it is the most lethal insurgency on the continent, having claimed an estimated 29,000 lives since 2002, and shows no signs of abating.”
“The very fact of being female is proven to enjoy several tactical advantages. First, women suicide terrorists capitalise and thrive on the ‘element of surprise.’ They can take advantage of cultural reluctance toward physical searches to evade detection. Given their seemingly feminine facade, they are categorically perceived as gentle and non-threatening. Further, they constitute a potentially large pool of recruits, a resource that terrorist organisations can draw from and cash in on. Symbolically, the death of women bombers is more likely to evoke a feeling of desperation and sympathy,” noted Bloom.
Investigations revealed that children and child-widows of slain Boko Haram fighters are also conscripted as suicide bombers. During their conscription, they are allegedly brainwashed and psychologically programmed to die for martyrdom, often as revenge against ‘infidels’ whom they are made to believe caused the death of their loved ones.
The girl bombers are also recruited through female scouts. In June 2014, for instance, troops arrested three suspected female Boko Haram members Hafsat, Zainab and Aisha, have been secretly recruiting girls for Boko Haram.
Boko Haram corrupts theology, victims’ psychology
Boko Haram’s girl bombers are psychologically and physically coerced into carrying out the attacks, according to Milda Okoro-Essiet. The child psychologist argued that the remote detonation of explosives strapped to the sect’s child victims also suggests that the girls may be unaware of the gravity of their mission or the masterminds did not trust the girls would have sufficient courage to carry out the attacks.
While it is possible that the Boko Haram may be selecting those that are too uneducated or naive to recognise that they are actually carrying explosives, the confession of a suspected female suicide bomber, Zaharau Babangida, indicates that the girls are also being coerced. The 13-year-old girl was arrested strapped to a bomb in December 2014 in Kano State.
She narrated how she was conscripted by her biological father and transferred to one of Boko Haram’s radicalisation camps in Bauchi forest. She revealed that an ideologue in the camp tried to brainwash and intimidate them into undertaking a suicide mission.
“I was not moved by the soul searching preaching of bounties in the heaven and it was at this point, their leader resorted to threat and intimidation to obtain my consent. We were shown a deep hole where the leader of the group threatened to bury us alive at a point if any of us refused to play along, and at another time, he picked a big gun and threatened to shoot anyone who fails to obey his command,” she said.
Subsequently, Zaharau was taken to a market in Kantin Kwari, Kano, along with two other girls, who detonated their bombs – killing six people, including the bombers. The 13-year-old, who was injured in the blasts, said she was too scared to go through with the attack after she saw her mates’ cadavers barely a second after they detonated their bombs. She made her way to a nearby hospital in Dawanau, where she was arrested.
At the backdrop of the dangerous trend, Islamic clerics reiterate that Boko Haram interprets religious texts out of context. “They paint the texts in shades of violence and force-feed it to impressionable girls and boys in their captivity. What they teach these kids is at extreme variance with the tenets of Islam,” stated Borno-based cleric, Muhammadu Arif.
Idowu Bisi-Akinrolatan, a social psychologist, argued that, “most of these girls have experienced untold miseries since the insurgency began. Many have seen their parents, siblings, friends and other loved ones shot to death or decapitated by Boko Haram. The impact of such horror on their psyche is often immeasurable. The future looks bleak to them. Having been forcefully conscripted as suicide bombers, they resign to fate and consider their imminent death a shortcut to escape the hard life that they live. It doesn’t hurt them too, to believe the propaganda that they will gain an early access to paradise, she explained.
Thus poor, vulnerable girls, are brainwashed into believing that if they succeed in detonating bombs in crowded places, they would be killing infidels who are intent on corrupting the lifestyle that God wants humanity to follow.
Theological luminaries consider this thought process, “altruistic evil” which thrives on the flawed belief that convenient evil is ordained by God. But Sheikh Idris Alogba, an Islamic scholar, argued that evil is never ordained by God. “The God that we serve, Allah (S.W.T), has no blood thirst. He does not approve of mindless killing or murder under any guise. Boko Haram, suicide bombing or terrorism by any premise are unapproved in the sight of God. Islam is a religion of peace. Allah is a God of peace. The terrorists are misguided, likewise the suicide bombers,” he said.
Defeating terror
Yahaya Imam, Borno State Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), described the spread of terrorism in Nigeria’s northeast zone as unfortunate but he commended the Nigerian military and leadership for prosecuting a decisive and successful routing of Boko Haram from its strongholds. Yahaya believes a cultural and value reorientation of Nigerian youths will sensitise them to progressive civic responsibility and prevent more youths from falling prey to terrorist sects like Boko Haram. However, the NOA boss lamented the unavailability of funds required by his agency to execute positive youth orientation projects in war-ravaged Borno.
According to him, “The NOA is taking steps to involve traditional authorities and youth organisations in its reorientation and peace-building drive across Borno. And our efforts are yielding fruits.
Abdullahi Ibrahim, the Commander of the Borno State Command of the NSCDC, stated that his command has taken far-reaching measures to prevent attacks by suicide bombers. “We have our officers embedded in various parts of the community across the state. Our intelligence network is ever active and primed to nip any dangerous development in the bud,” he said.
Ibrahim stated that his command’s collaboration with the Nigerian Army in Borno has yielded very positive and encouraging results in the war against terrorism. For instance, Amina and her late mate, Zainab, were intercepted by a combined team of NSCDC and the army before they could wreak havoc in Maiduguri few weeks ago.
Fiona Lovatt, a New Zealand teacher, poet and humanitarian volunteer based in Kano, advocated a departure from the dominant narrative about girl-child agents cum victims of Boko Haram’s suicide bombing attacks. According to her, the issue of child radicalisation by Boko Haram constitutes a red herring. She lamented that Borno’s girl-child bombers are endangered children bearing the brunt of society’s inadequacies.
She urged the government to protect children of the war-ravaged region. “And if they are abducted and taken into savannah grasslands, find them and bring them home. Treat them well when they get back,” she said.
But who will treat them well when they get back? Adijatu, for instance, was forced to relocate from her native Borno to Sabo, Ogun State, following her one-year ordeal as a captive sex slave and child bride of Boko Haram. The 17-year-old believed her travails were over immediately she was rescued and returned to Bama, her hometown, by the military Joint Task Force (JTF). Unknown to her, her nightmare was just beginning. The teenager fled her home when her best friend’s aunt and guardian tried to bash in the skull of her infant son, Habibi, because she conceived of him by a Boko Haram fighter. And she was not even a ‘suicide bomber.’
A worse fate awaits intercepted bombers like Amina and Zaharau. Popular cultural beliefs about ‘bad blood’ and ‘witchcraft’ are exacerbated by stories of girls returning from captivity to murder their parents. This explains why a mother invited soldiers to arrest her returnee daughter after the latter confided in her that she was trained as a suicide bomber. Women and girls who spent time in captivity are often referred to by communities as “Boko Haram wives,” “Sambisa women,” “Boko Haram blood” and “Annoba” (epidemics).
Survivors’ legitimate concerns about being shunned by their communities are compounded by their fear that the militants will return and track them down. One such survivor said in an interview that she feared that her Boko Haram militant husband would “kill her for running away;” at the same time, in her community, she is considered “an outcast…they remind me that I have Boko Haram inside me,” she said.
Thus rescuing the women from the insurgents is only one part of the solution, according to expert psychological opinion. Providing emotional support, health services, and community reintegration is critical to the success of Nigeria’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategy.
In June 2015, Dr. Fatima Akilu, head of the Countering Violent Extremism Department of the Office of the National Security Advisor, announced that 20 women and girls who had been recruited by Boko Haram had been “saved” and were “undergoing rehabilitation and de-radicalisation,” although the details were never released.
The support efforts, noted Dr. Abubakar Monguno, should be survivor based. Monguno, working with a team including Dr. Yagana Imam, Yagana Bukar and Bilkisu Lawan Gana from UNIMAID, and in collaboration with the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), the Borno State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, International Alert and UNICEF, authored a report revealing that hostile perceptions place children conceived of rape and violence on Boko Haram terror camps are “at risk of rejection, abandonment, discrimination and potential violence.”
They advocate that support efforts should also integrate social workers into affected communities to identify families at risk of breakdown. The social workers should follow up with home visits together with religious officials, to provide mediation and guidance to husbands and family members.
But that is in the long run. In the short run, urgent steps should be taken to assist victims and survivors like Amina and Zaharau to pick the broken pieces of their lives. Every day, the teenagers struggle to forget the act that was meant to end their lives: the righteous murder of innocent folks who committed no wrong against them and their instigators.
At the time of their arrest, they were both frightened and sad. But their fear was borne of valour; the courage to say “No” to mindless carnage of their own people. Zaharau, 13, could not envision paradise by killing herself and innocent people. Amina, 17, couldn’t either. They probably dread the scorn of friends and strangers by whose deaths they could become ‘evil.’
Nonetheless, their fate resonates a tragedy so overpowering that it incites a torrent of feelings. Beyond that, there is guilt – that our desire for them is so strong that it sets the society, like a bird of prey, to stalk them, stigmatise them and reignite their buried narratives. In their sad, sorry world, every muted spasm and tragic elocution of pain pricks their hide and sink like claws. There is no clear significance. There is only loss.
The Nation’s Olatunji Ololade yesterday won two awards at the Diamond Awards Media for Media Excellence (DAME) held last night in Lagos.
Ololade had three nominations. These were in Development Reporting, Political Reporting, Child-Friendly Reporting. The two categories he won were in Political and Child-Friendly categories.
It is a harsh life for Nigeria’s child brides; besides the trauma of protracted labour on bodies too young to birth a child, the death of the child and severity of injuries sustained during labour, the child bride loses her role as wife and mother. This loss is nothing compared to the trauma of ostracism and betrayal she suffers by her parents and other family members, writes OLATUNJI OLOLADE, Assistant Editor
A victim of child marriage
Just off the highway that leads to Kubwa, an Abuja outskirt, twilight bounds softly on the path to Lima’s spot. Lima, in skintight pants and transparent sari, sits in a corner of an open bar. Unlike the other girls, she does not loiter too close to the entrance, neither does she try so hard to gain the attention of every male patron; she tries not to be too obvious.
“I am not a common prostitute…I don’t parade myself like bad tomato,” she explains. There is something instructive in her analogy of the “bad tomato.” It puts in a nutshell, the realities that shape the life of the 17-year-old divorcee and social outcast.
Lima’s predicament began eight years ago in Danjida, Kano State. Just before she clocked10, her mother told her that she would be escorting her to a traditional family festival; the party was allegedly organised by the family’s elders for pretty young girls like Lima, as an initiation into womanhood. The nine-year-old was ecstatic; she was going to be a woman and, according to her mother, she would receive a lot of expensive gifts from her family friends and relatives.
The evening before the event, Lima and her mother departed from their Kawaje neighbourhood for a large compound in Danjida, her ancestral homeland, where they sat all night with her first cousins, distant cousins and other girls whom she could barely recognise. The girls waited expectantly and watched with admiration as their mothers chatted animatedly and danced to the drumbeats.
They were there all night but at the first streak of daylight, Lima’s paternal aunt, Aunt Sajida, emerged from the backyard to lead her to her fate. “She told me not to cry and urged me to do our family proud. She said if I did, I would get a lot of gifts and grow to become a very beautiful woman,” says Lima.
The nine-year-old followed her aunt sheepishly to the backyard. there, she was led into a dark room occupied by two women. According to her, no sooner did she enter than the women grabbed her hands and held her in a tight grip, one of them locking her legs and the other her arms. While she struggled with terror and an intense foreboding of what was to come, a third woman entered the room and lifted her wrapper. As Lima was struggling, her pant was practically torn off; then she felt excruciating pain. Blood gushed from her private part and cascaded her legs. In seconds, Lima (who clocked 10 years overnight) passed out.
By the time she woke up, she had undergone the gishiri cut (circumcision) and has thus become a woman by cultural standards. But nobody told her of the pain; after her circumcision, the women sewed up her private part without anaesthesia, thus causing her great pains and she bled continuously from the wound. Panic-stricken, her mother and aunt screamed repeatedly at the women who circumcised her and the latter ran helter-skelter to stop the bleeding.
Eventually, somebody brought some black powder and applied it on the wound, but it only caused her to smart and squirm some more. Lima bled the whole day and as she cried, her mother and aunt applied the black powder intermittently on the wound, causing her more pain. “I could not pee. Every time I tried to, I felt intense pain in my genitals,” says Lima, adding that she fell ill from the wound over a long period.
The following year, Lima was forcefully married to 76-year old Baba Ahmadu, her father’s best friend in a hastily contrived marriage ceremony. The details, she says, were unclear to her but she remembers that money changed hands between her father and her husband. The first time she had sex with her husband, there was a lot of trouble; Lima lied to him that she needed to pee and thereby fled to her parents’ house but her father ordered her brothers to return her to her husband. “My mother slapped me and issued me a stern warning not to disgrace her. Then my brothers tied my hands and flogged me with horsewhip,” she discloses.
They delivered her at the tender age of 11 to her husband, feet and hands bound and legs held firmly apart so he could consummate the marriage. Before the consummation, an elderly woman whom Lima identifies as her husband’s younger sister came in to undo the stitches sewn on her genitals after her circumcision. Lima had to go through this without any form of anaesthesia, hence she was in great pains. Then her brothers held her in position for her husband to mount her.
“I was already in great pain and I bled profusely before he mounted me. I begged my brothers to release me; I pleaded with them to stop holding me down for Baba Ahmadu but they turned deaf ears. They kept telling me to shut up and looked away. After he (her husband) finished, I saw him dip his hands into his pocket and give them (her brothers) N1,000,” recollects Lima with a sob.
The next day, her Aunt Mariam came visiting and tearfully, Lima recounted to her, her gruesome experience in the hands of her husband but to her horror, the latter patted her on the back and told her to cooperate with her husband. “She said I was no longer a child and that the more I struggled with him, the greater disgrace I bring upon our family. She said our ancestors would curse me if I did not stop disgracing our family…when I told her that my genitals bleed and hurt me badly, she said if I relax the next time my husband lies with me, the pain would stop and the wound will heal quicker,” says Lima.
But the pain never stopped nor did the wound heal quickly as her aunt assured her. Lima claims she felt violated and hurt every time her husband had sex with her and for a week, she could not stand or walk upright. “I could not sit down or walk upright because of the pain. I hated my husband more every time he slept with me. He virtually forced himself on me and he was very rough. Eventually, I became pregnant in two months,” she says.
However, due to complications from protracted labour, Lima’s baby died at birth and she suffered a severe case of obstetric fistula. At the onset of the disease – vesico vaginal fistula (VVF) or obstetric fistula – Lima’s husband abandoned her. She says: “He took me to the clinic and abandoned me there. He said I was destroying his home with urine and faeces. Then he sent my belongings to my parents. He said he was no longer interested in marrying me. He said I had brought him agony and bad luck.”
To her chagrin, her parents sent her belongings to her at the hospital. According to her, “They sent my eldest brother to give them to me with a sum of N900. He told me that I was not expected back home since I had brought shame on my family. He said my father had chased mother out of the house and spat at me.”
It took Lima two years and a month before she got cured and when she did, she departed for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, by the assistance of a nurse. The latter handed her over to a childhood friend who purportedly runs a food canteen in Kubwa, Abuja. With gratitude and optimism, Lima departed Kano for Abuja with her benefactress. But the truth didn’t dawn on her until she got to Abuja; there was no waitress job waiting for her at a food canteen, rather she was forced to squat in a tiny room at the back of her benefactress’ makeshift beer parlour in Kubwa. There, she survives by hawking sex for money, even as you read.
Lima says things are looking up for her; four months ago, her Madame granted her the freedom to entertain her own clients between 5 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. every day. Notwithstanding her predicament, Lima says: “I don’t fling myself at any man. I am not some cheap prostitute. I respect myself,” she says with the coolness of a sex worker who knows that patronage may be acquired by more discreet measures, like elegance and stubborn pride.
A suicide mission
A visit to Lima’s hometown heralds a pilgrimage of sort; the whereabouts of Lima’s mother and eldest brother is unknown and her father, Audu, currently grapples with old age. He suffers fecal and urinal incontinence brought about by age; he urinates and defaecates where he sleeps and his body is riddled with bedsores. None of the three wives he married after Lima’s mother stays with him. “they all deserted him as his condition worsened and it became clear that he lacks the means to cater for his household,” reveals Saidattu Mohammed, a bean and corn syrup seller who claims to be responsible for the 89-year old’s breakfast and supper every day. “Nobody pays me for what I do. I do it for God,” she claims.
Despite his predicament, the 89-year old betrays no love for Lima neither does he feel contrition for the way he treated her. His eyes widened and he got very agitated when the reporter revealed that he had spoken to Lima. Idrissu, a gangly youth, presumably in his mid-20s who identified himself as Lima’s immediate elder brother, ushered me out of their compound, muttering curses under his breath. According to my guide, any attempt to stay longer would have ended disastrously.
Five cows for a daughter
Like Lima, Hamida suffered the raw end of the deal from her husband and family. Hamida, 18, sells fruits at the Mararaba orange market in Nasarrawa. But that is her day job; at night, Hamida joins two of her friends at a popular roadside bar in Utaku, Abuja. At the back of the bar, she changes into tight-fitting blouse and skimpy skirt. Then she stands by the roadside to beckon on would-be patrons for ‘short-time’ sex or ‘till-day-break’ romp.
The 18-year-old’s journey to infamy began six years ago on a quiet afternoon in Kajuru, Kaduna State. According to her, she was just starting to heal from circumcision ritual when her mother and eldest sister, a widow, sat her down to inform her that they had accepted a marriage proposal on her behalf.
“When I protested that I was too young for marriage and that I would rather go to school, my mother told me that education is not meant for a cultured and dutiful daughter. Immediately, I rushed to ask my father why he did that. I told him he wouldn’t do that, if he truly loved me but he brought out a whip and started flogging me. He said he had accepted five cows for my hand. It was the first time my father flogged me in two years…I begged him not to marry me off, I cried that the marriage will kill me but he said I had become wayward and threatened to disown me if I failed to obey his wish,” reveals Hamida.
Eventually, she did her parent’s bidding and Hamida got married to Usman, a 65-year-old cow dealer at the age of 12. After the wedding, the newlywed relocated to Jibiya, Katsina State, where Usman sold cows. However, the matrimony was never as heavenly as Hamida’s mother assured her it would be.
“I had two senior wives and life with them was hellish. None of them had ever gotten pregnant and the fact that I got pregnant one month into my marriage made them hate me. They taunted me endlessly, claiming that I had charmed their husband and that God will deal with me…Eventually, their wishes came true; when I went into labour, my husband had travelled on a business trip, hence my senior wives invited a local midwife and abandoned me with her.
“They didn’t care that I had complications. The midwife said my waist was too tiny to birth a child and I had lost too much blood. After three days of painful labour, I was delivered in my room. I was there for about three days. I experienced serious pains and bled continuously. My baby never cried; I tried to breast feed him but he refused to feed. His breathing was barely audible. Worried by his state, the midwife prepared some herbal concoction and forced it down his throat; this caused his stomach and the left side of his chest to become distended.
“They said it was his heart that got bloated. At this point, the midwife stopped coming. When I sent a neighbour’s child to find her, they said she had travelled…Eventually my neighbours helped me to the hospital. When I got there, my son was confirmed dead. He died on the day that we were supposed to have his naming ceremony. While I cried, the doctor told me that I was very sick and they referred me for further treatment at the big hospital in Babbar Ruga (Babbar Ruga Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) Centre in Katsina State). By that time, I was defaecating and urinating all over my body. The doctor and the nurses covered their noses and mouths while they attended to me.
“More painful was the fact that my husband at his arrival from his business trip, came to inform me that he was divorcing me. He accused me of killing his child and told me never to set foot in his house again. My mother came to see me in Babbar Ruga but she only came to give me two wrappers and N2,000. She said I should try to beg my husband and get back into his house. She said no one would welcome me back into my father’s house,” recollects Hamida.
After undergoing corrective surgery at Babbar Ruga, Hamida relocated to Abuja with two of her friends. Today, she survives by petty trade in fruits at daytime and a nocturnal trade in sex for money.
VVF patient dripping with urine
Customary disaster
The plight of Lima and Hamida illustrates the stark misery characteristic of the world of many child brides in the country. By its magnitude, VVF is a major public health problem in Nigeria. Prevalence estimations range from as low as 100,000 to as much as 1,000,000 cases. Health experts, however, quote 400,000 to 800,000 even as Dutch surgeon, Dr. Kees Waaldijk, who has worked with the Nigerian government in the past 25 years, to end fistula through his direction of the Nigeria National Fistula Programme, states firmly that the backlog is 200,000 to a maximum 250,000 patients.
The incidence is estimated at 20,000 new cases a year; while 90 per cent are untreated. This implies that about 55 women are infected by VVF and 18,000 cases are untreated daily. It is estimated that two million women suffer from obstetric fistula globally. In Nigeria alone, the north has over 85 per cent of these cases. The vast majority of VVF is caused by obstructed labour, gishiri (circumcision) cut and obstetrical trauma.
Fistula, the Latin word for “pipe,” is an “abnormal passage” between organs —in this case, between the vagina and the bladder, the rectum, or both. The hole makes the woman uncontrollably incontinent of urine or feces or both and transforms a healthy person into a leaking, reeking, “cesspit,” in the words of Lima.
Obstetric fistula results from obstructed labour, which occurs when the baby cannot pass through the mother’s birth canal because it either does not come head first or is too large for her pelvis. Prompt medical intervention, often including Caesarean section, permits a delivery safe for both mother and child. But thousands of times each year across the country, birthing women receive no such aid and their labour is a futile agony lasting between three and five days, with uterine contractions constantly forcing the baby, usually head first, against unyielding pelvic bone.
The unremitting pressure usually kills the child and prevents blood supply to the soft tissues of the vagina and other organs trapped between the baby’s skull and her pelvis. Eventually these tissues also die, forming one or more fistulas and the baby’s head softens sufficiently for the stillborn child to pass from her body. Should she survive, the mother soon finds urine, faeces or both leaking unstoppably from her vagina.
In about a fifth of cases, the woman also suffers nerve injury that can cause a condition called footdrop, which prevents normal walking. Constant contact with urine or faeces irritates and infects her skin and other tissues. Her kidneys, bladder, or other nearby organs may also be damaged. Her menstrual periods may stop, rendering her infertile.
If Lima and Hamida’s experiences are more favourable than most, their years of destitution and social banishment are disturbingly typical. The Nation findings reveal that the majority of VVF sufferers are abandoned by their families, divorced by their husbands, and forced to fend for themselves, often by begging, menial jobs and prostitution.
Hopeful interventions
Nigeria has a long-standing history of fistula repair: Dr. Sr. Ann Ward was Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and fistula expert and trainer at St. Luke’s Hospital, Anua, Akwa Ibom State. She recently retired after a 40-year career. She also was in charge of the vesico-vaginal fistula treatment at nearby Itam. However, the acceleration of surgical interventions began with the arrival in Katsina in 1983 of Dr. Kees Waaldijk, a plastic surgeon from the Netherlands. He came primarily to repair the leprosy patients but quickly devoted his energy exclusively to fistula repair and training.
In the early 90s, the National Foundation on VVF was created with Dr. Waaldijk as the leading surgeon. With the commencement of the Campaign to End Fistula nationwide, fistula repair in Nigeria progressed in higher gear. An extra boost for advocacy as well as repair was given through an event that still is the referral activity: the organisation of the Fistula Fortnight in four Northern states in 2005.
Currently, there are approximately 20 centres providing VVF treatment on a regular basis in the country. According to Dr. Waaldijk, 11 of these centres are part of the National VVF Project. By 2008, the National VVF Project had performed a total 25,000 VVF/RVF repairs and related interventions since its inception.
The exact number of fistula repairs carried out annually in Nigeria is, however, unknown. Most VVF treatment centres collect information on the number of interventions carried out, but recording and reporting is incomplete and non-systematic. A centralised recording and reporting system is not in place either. It is, however, estimated that approximately some 2,000 to 4,000 fistula repairs are done every year.
But even as studies enumerate anatomical, matrimonial, and demographic factors that increase risk, experts emphasize that the basic reason for fistulas lies not in women’s bodies, social lives, or diet alone, but in the failure of health systems to provide the resources needed to ensure safe childbirth. Many studies lay “undue emphasis…on early marriage as the aetiology of the disease,” states Dr. Mohammed Kabir of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in Kano. According to him, the lack of skilled supervision, of childbirth and adequate emergency facilities are to blame.
Further findings reveal that the prevalence of obstetric fistula is embedded in a complex network of social issues, including socio-cultural perceptions of the status of women, the distribution and availability of health care resources, perceptions about the nature and importance of maternal health problems, and the social, economic and political infrastructures of affected societies.
“Three stages of delay,” according to medical experts, prevent victims from get-
ting the help they deserve. First, embarrassment, tradition, cost or misplaced optimism delays the realization that labour has gone awry. Second, distance, bad roads, or lack of a vehicle delay the journey to a clinic or hospital where the situation could probably have been salvaged. Finally, crowding, understaffing, or lack of resources may delay the needed services when the woman finally arrives at the clinic. A Caesarean section performed within the first 48 hours of labour will generally prevent fistula, although it may not save the baby.
An affliction of the poor?
Fatimatu Saliu, a Zaria-based nurse and social worker, argues that a greater percentage of VVF patients usually fall within the low income and impoverished economic divide. “You hardly see the rich marrying their underage daughters off for money. Many of the victims come from poor homes and their parents marry them off at a tender age for economic gain,’’ she says.
One perception too many
Marriage historians have noted that it will take more than a couple of decades to rewrite a marital playbook that is thousands of years old. The institutions of child marriage are a remnant of medieval marital culture. Men who practise these types of antiquated marriages adamantly resist and reject contemporary notions of marriage as a partnership of equals based upon mutual love and free-will. The practices of child marriage rely upon the historical, social and cultural assumptions and beliefs that support marriage as an economic transaction, whereby a woman or girl, is merely an object for exchange between one man and another.
These practices inflict great harm upon women and girls. According to Milda Okonedo, a social psychologist, it traps young girls in relationships that deprive them of their childhood and education while making them vulnerable and at risk for abuse, disease and even death; this impact negatively on the woman they eventually become.
Nigerian VVF patients waiting for treatment at a local VVF centre
Social constructions of the child bride
As a married partner, her new social set is supposed to be other married women, but being a mere child, most of these women will be older and not likely to be an easy social fit. Consequently, married girls straddle two worlds and frequently find that they are alone and isolated in their new marital homes. For instance, interviews with victims reveal that they are isolated and under the control of their husbands and co-wives. Their isolation compounds their diminished access to information and services, making them not easily reached by conventional mechanisms such as youth centers or peer education.
The federal Government has attempted to outlaw child marriage. In 2003 it passed the Child Rights Act, prohibiting marriage under the age of 18. But to correct the anomaly, Janet Essiet, a Kano-based lawyer and ‘women’s rights activist’ suggests more government interventions at the grassroots. “Research findings persistently reveal that child marriage is perpetrated mostly among impoverished folks in the country’s rural areas. The government needs to make its presence felt at these local levels. Government could bolster its efforts by improving agricultural support and facilitating more income-generating opportunities for many families at the grassroots. If parents can adequately cater for their children’s needs, they won’t be forced to marry them off at ridiculous prices for survival,” she says.
The government also needs to cooperate with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) committed to the eradication of the problem, argues Zulaykha Habib, a guidance counsellor and owner of Muslim Sisters Development Foundation. “Efforts should be geared to sensitise parents on the need to delay their daughters’ marriage and instead pursue their educational and psychosocial development,” she advises.
Higher levels of education significantly decrease the risk of child marriage, with secondary education, especially strong in stalling age at marriage until a girl is 18 years or older. Governments and NGOs fighting against child marriage may focus on education and making parents aware of the benefits of allowing their daughters go to school. They need to know that education provides alternatives for their daughters that can lead to employment, earnings and an economic future that will benefit not only their daughters, but their family and community as well.
But as the government and other stakeholders return to the drawing board, they will do well to include severely damaged and disillusioned divorcees and former child brides like Hamida and Lima in their loop of schemes. “Leaving such kids to their devices forebodes greater doom for them and the society at large. The misery and disillusionment they feel destroys their psychology and inflicts upon them a jaded view of the entire world. They have lost hope in the society and average human’s capacity to be good. This is a horrific way to see the world, particularly for teenagers and future mothers,” argues Okonedo.
Okonedo couldn’t be too far from the truth; a journey through Lima’s mind for instance reveals world-weariness characteristic of the aged who considers hope inconsequential after suffering through many tragic disappointments in her lifetime.
Lima hurts severely every time she remembers her first time in the dimly lit room where Aunt Mariam hushed her to sleep with promises of pleasure and folk song. Aunt Mariam had been sent in to calm her after she got restless and hysterical at the prospect of ‘lying’ with Baba Ahmadu, 76, her father’s best friend.
Aunt Mariam was convincing: venomous threats and thinly veiled lies leapt from her lips in measured cadence; the effect was frightening, it kept Lima from screaming and attempting further escape from the dark room. Although she eventually escaped, seven years on since the sad incident, she is still in the dark room.
Death came to Rann in common hours. It arrived in a hail of fire, consuming children and parents while they queued for food and relief materials at the district’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp.
Meredith Wakanda, 26, is a Food Security Analyst with another UN aid agency in Borno. When she is not accompanying missions to deliver relief materials and other assistance to fringe communities caught up in the anti-terrorism war in Nigeria’s northeast, she lives in the State capital with her parents.
Sporadic attacks by Boko Haram continually slow the place of development work in the region as aid workers are often forced to flee humanitarian projects in the region’s hot zones for the safety of the capital cities. But even the capital cities offer minimal refuge to the humanitarian staff. Many are forced to adhere to strict safety rules to avoid targeted attacks by Boko Haram.
Borno State, officially acknowledged as the “State of Peace” is undoubtedly the worst hit by the insurgency. Prior to the emergence of the incumbent government, aid workers fled the State. Until their flight, Borno was home to several high profile domestic and international aid agencies and personnel.
In parts of north-east Nigeria, where the volatile security environment has disrupted overland transport routes, air travel is often the only practical solution for getting humanitarian assistance to people in need. Coupled with the challenges of extreme poverty, underdevelopment and climate change in the Lake Chad Region, years of violent conflict between the government and Boko Haram have thrust the country into one of the most acute humanitarian crises in the world. Today 26 million people are affected and 13.4 million in need of humanitarian assistance according to UN estimates.
There is no gainsaying that humanitarian aid workers are exposed to intractable hardships in the course of their work. To compensate them for their efforts, they are entitled to certain mobility and hardship arrangements. The intent is to offer a comprehensive approach to compensation for service in the field and provide incentives for staff to accept assignments to the difficult and sometimes dangerous locations where staffing and effective programme delivery is often the most challenging.
ns of child marriage are a remnant of medieval marital culture. Men who practise these types of antiquated marriages adamantly resist and reject contemporary notions of marriage as a partnership of equals based upon mutual love and free-will. The practices of child marriage rely upon the historical, social and cultural assumptions and beliefs that support marriage as an economic transaction, whereby a woman or girl, is merely an object for exchange between one man and another.