Comms And A Handy Air Support: Two Basic Things Buhari’s $1bn Could Have Provided To Prevent Metele By Umar Sa’ad Hassan

President Buhari’s decision to withdraw the sum of
$1bn from the excess crude account to fight insecurity raised a lot
of eyebrows. He was initially reported as saying the sum was
specifically intended for the war against Boko Haram before
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo adjusted the rhetoric to ‘fighting
insecurity across the country’. Either way, government’s priority
had always been the security situation in the north-east and not a
few tongues wagged as to the President’s insincerity not only to
Nigerians but himself.

A supposedly ‘technically defeated’ and ‘degraded’
Boko Haram shouldn’t command that much attention. Word in most
quarters was that President Buhari and the APC wanted to start
preparing early for 2019 and also the Ekiti and Osun gubernatorial
elections holding this year.

The massacre of 100 soldiers at the military base in
Metele, Borno state, by the Boko Haram sect all but confirms that
that money did not go into equipping our troops. A survivor
narrating the ordeal he and others went through said the officer at
the observation post alerted others about an approaching entourage
of Boko Haram fighters a whole hour before they got to the base.
With the billion dollar kitty Buhari had, it is simply unimaginable
that a military base in a war zone like the north-east would lack
an active comms system to call for reinforcement or air support.
It’s excruciating to think those men were left on their own to ward
off at least 20 trucks of well armed insurgents hell-bent on
achieving their aim of attacking as many military bases as
possible. It is interesting to note that Metele isn’t the first nor
is it the second military base to be attacked this year so if our
soldiers weren’t better prepared than they were then they were as
best as they possibly could.

A UN report revealed the federal government paid a
huge sum of money to secure the release of the school girls
kidnapped in Dapchi, Yobe state. Though the videos circulating
online of the insurgents killing Nigerian soldiers have been said
to be not those of the Metele massacre, one can see how the use of
rocket grenade launchers helped weaken the resistance by our
soldiers. Government did not bother equipping the military with the
right arms to fight insurgents it had funded with ransom payments
for kidnap victims said to be in double-digit millions of
euros.

Our billion dollars well spent would have meant not a
single soul lost in Metele. A functional communication system would
have enabled the soldiers who had a full hour to prepare and who
spent close to 40 minutes exchanging fire with the insurgents
before they ran out of ammunition to call for air support. With
fighter planes SUPPOSEDLY handy in times like these,one hour 40
minutes is enough time to fly and reclaim a distress zone. Nothing
could be more shattering than learning some soldiers went to fetch
the bodies of their dead colleagues and were ambushed in the
process.

No air support, no prior surveillance.These men were
sent blind and practically helpless to be finished off by a better
equipped enemy. What manner of military, with full knowledge of a
very obvious pattern of attacks by its enemies that had claimed the
lives of several of its men, wouldn’t have taken extra measures to
forestall or at the very least, repel future occurrences? That
President Buhari has refused to sack the service chiefs lends
further credence to the fact that he fully understands he has not
availed them with the resources to do that.

A lot of people questioned the propriety of buying 12
fighter planes to be built and delivered by the US in 2020 with the
instant threat on ground. A tucano plane which has been quoted by
foreign military sources to be in the $8-$10M range is what the
goverment says it bought for over $41m each. Add another $30M
(tops) for transportation and training of personnel and you still
will not come close to the $496m Buhari claims he paid for them.
E-mails to the US mission asking questions as to costs are replied
with a message directing all inquires to the Nigerian government.
Say President Buhari was magnanimous enough to spend some of
that $1 billion
on this very controversial purchase,was it a wise call? I doubt
so.

What we needed was a very short-run supply of
equipment to totally annihilate insurgents he has referred to as
‘technically defeated’ within the shortest period of time.

Over 100 soldiers were killed in Metele. Kareto and
Baga before that.Our service chiefs are still in office even with
soldiers openly bemoaning the lack of equipment to fight Boko
Haram. Buhari as an ex-army general who was a direct beneficiary of
a coup plot need not be told the far-reaching consequences of
leaving a military disgruntled. What we see today as soldiers
raining abuses and crying over out-dated ammo tanks could very well
transform into an overthrow of a democratically elected
government.

And in that television and radio broadcast if it does
happen, the state of the military even after President Buhari’s
withdrawal of $1b to fight insurgency will feature prominently. God
help us.

Hassan is a lawyer based in
Kano.,Twitter:
@Alaye_100, Email-uhassan077@gmail.com^[1]

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