Jonathan’s govt not fuelling insurgency –Sagir Mohammed

Retired Captain Sagir Moham­med was in Nigerian military intelligence unit in the 90s where he had a distinguished career during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. He is today a tra­ditional title holder in Ringim, Jigawa State. He spoke to DESMOND MGBOH in Kano. Excerpt:

May we know your reaction to last Friday’s triple bomb attack on the Kano Central Mosque by suspected insurgents?
It is sad, it is very sad. It is so dastardly an act. It is an act carried out by those who have specialized in nihilistic destruction… no religion, not any culture that I know of can justify what happened in Kano last Fri­day. It was naked barbarism. I just pray to God that we would never again witness this type of barbarism and vandalism, not only in Kano State but throughout the country. My heart also goes to the affected families. May Allah give them the heart to cope. My prayers also go to the injured, the wounded who are recuperating in the hospitals. I pray that Allah will grant them quick recovery.
When the Vice President, Namadi Sam­bo came to Kano, on Monday, he stressed that the Federal Government was doing everything to address the insurgency crisis. He also refuted suggestion among some Northerners that the Federal Government is fuelling the crisis for some political gains. Do you think that this government has a hidden agenda?
I will address this question as a person, as a human being and as somebody who has fundamental right to speak. You see as far as I am concerned, I have never for a minute, given that kind of ugly specula­tion a thought. This is because I don’t be­lieve that a government can get so low to the point of sponsoring terrorism against its own citizens. I don’t think so. I don’t think that those who are speculating this ill statement have got any iota of evidence to support their claim. I don’t think so. If you tell me that we are not fighting Boko Haram crisis the way we should be fighting it, well that could be possible.
The only problem I see … like the Chief of Army Staff had said, like the President has admitted that he requires a certain amount of money to buy advanced weapon­ry to fight Boko Haram, yes I would agree on this. The weapons are inadequate. And that reminds me, I keep wondering from where these insurgents are getting their sophisticated weapons. But to say that the Federal Government is aiding and abetting insurgency, No, No, No, I don’t believe that rubbish.
As a leading Northerner, what do you think would have informed this specula­tion among some members of the North­ern elite class?
Well you see, if the people are frus­trated. Frustration can lead to anger and the by-product of anger could be you say whatever you want to say without any justi­fication. That is why you don’t allow frus­tration to permeate. You shouldn’t allow it. Unfortunately, right now, there is a huge sense of frustration in the land. This is be­cause everywhere you see or go, there are refugees. We have a good Army, we have a good police, but the question that comes up here is, why is it that we cannot success­fully fight this insurgency? We have to have a rethink.
When you say rethink, what is it the government should do in your opinion to have this ‘rethink’?
My advice is that they should invite re­tired military officers, not more than 20. And they should invite the retired security and military intelligence officers, not more than 20 too. We form a think tank and pro­ceed to give alternative advice to the Fed­eral Government to support the existing advice that they have. I know for sure that President Goodluck is giving out money to fight terrorism. But I will go with the usual sentiment that Ihejirika has case to answer with regards to the management of those re­sources. I am not saying that he stole them, but I am saying that he has a case to answer. He also has a case to answer with regard to the strategy that he was adopting in the fight against insurgency.
Given the negative impact of this kind of speculation- and worse of all, if it is just a fabricated tale, would say that those behind this rumour have been fair to the Federal Gov­ernment and the Nigerian military?
I believe that every citizen of this coun­try, irrespective of politics, religion and region should come together in ending this problem of insurgency in the land. Politics at this stage would not help the situation. It would rather worsen it. This is one point that the political class must take notice of. We must be more united than ever in the fight to end insurgency.
Don’t you think that this sort of speculation might be counter- pro­ductive to the morale of the sol­diers?
Well, already, I think that from all that we are seeing, the morale of the Nigerian Armed Forces is already on the low side. This is because, if you as a soldier, takes an inventory of battle ahead and from the beginning, you find that the enemy has su­perior weaponry, and you begin to think that you have a 50-50 per cent chance of win­ning, then the morale will start going down.
What I am saying is that it is preferable that a soldier going to fight is first and fore­most provided a basis for a high morale. You make sure that yes the logistics, weap­onry, the capacity on his side is higher than that of the enemy. This would enable him to continue advancing without stopping.
Most of our security agencies are headed by officers or civilians, who are Northerners or Muslims. How come that despite this, some elites in the North are still doubtful of the sincerity of the Federal Government to end the Boko Haram crisis in the North?
I have said it before. We have already analyzed that before. I have said that I don’t belong to that camp that believes that the Nigerian Armed Forces or the Federal Gov­ernment is conniving with the Boko Haram insurgents. I don’t share that view. I don’t believe in that. But certainly I believe that there is low morale in the military.
You talked about a strategy that was not properly adopted? What is this strategy?
Basically, I expect the authorities to, at this stage make a wide, holistic appreciation of the insurgents as a concept. They should, at this stage, be asking the following ques­tions: Who are the insurgents, what are they up to? What is their mission? And of course what is their vision? What do they want to achieve and then, what do they have in terms of logistics, in terms of manpower? How are they able to gather their intel­ligence? Because they do have their own intelligence. So, unless, we analyze these variables successfully and we find a way to counteract them, then we would continue to go nowhere.
I believe that we are still taking the in­surgency lightly. My worry is that people yet don’t know about the doctrine of insur­gency. People here don’t know the weight of what has come. Let me tell you some­thing….. if you are to be taught the doctrine of insurgency, they are going to tell you that insurgency is the most difficult aspect of warfare. This is because you don’t know your enemy, you don’t where and who your enemy is. And he is embedded within the community. If you start moving forward, maybe to the East, you will find they will tell you that he is behind you and your back is leaking. So, you see it is a very difficult operation. Take, for instance, Cambodia and all these places where there have been instances of insurgency, it took more than 20 years to eliminate insurgency there. Nigerians must not begin to assume that tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this insur­gency will be eradicated. No way! Unless we get our tactics, our weapons and our lo­gistics right, unless we restore the morale of the members of the Armed Forces, because they now have a sagging morale, unless those who fight, the infantry soldiers and the mechanized soldiers, we restore their morale.
But how do we restore the sag­ging morale of a soldier?
Well, you have to give him the confi­dence. Yes, the confidence. You have to make him understand that he has a superior weapon and tactics than that of his enemy. If he sees his Air Force, bombing, giving him cover, if he sees tanks moving, giv­ing him cover, oh, he too would move. The other aspect of his motivation is how do you take care of the casualty, whether dead or injured. There has to be good procedure of evacuation usually from the field up to the hospital. There has to be a good procedure so that as soon as your soldiers are injured, they can be evacuated immediately. If they cannot be treated in the field hospital, they should be evacuated straight to the hospi­tals. Also, the process of taking care of the benefits of the dead soldiers should also be analyzed. It is wrong that a soldier fighting, should have the feelings that if anything should go wrong, the members of his family would not be quickly attended to in terms of all his benefits. There are things that kill morale.
Why do you think that the United States has refused to sell arms to Nigeria, despite the level of terror that we have suffered even when the same United States is leading the battle against terrorism, spend­ing its money and sending its own troops to other parts of the world to fight insurgency?
Hypocrisy and nothing more! The West­ern world is hypocritical to us, Nigeria. They know that we are facing a set of ni­hilists; that we are facing a very dangerous situation that can even affect them, yet they don’t want to sell arms to us. Now, if you choose to go the Eastern block to buy, then you become their enemy. This is how the Western countries operate. Okay, we are with them, but they are not with us. I re­member (George) Bush said that it is either you are with us or you are against us. But see it, we are with them but they are against us.