The air strike launched penultimate Saturday by the military against Boko Haram insurgents at the Jilli market in Gubio Local Government Area of Borno State, has stirred bileful reactions from different segments of the country.
Human rights groups and some locals, on one hand, are alleging that scores of innocent civilians might have been hit and killed by the raid in the process of taking terrorists apart at the market.
Amnesty International (AI) said in a post on X the following day that more than 100 people were killed and 35 others seriously wounded in the raid on the village market, located on the border between Borno and Yobe State.
“We have their pictures and they include children. We are in touch with people that are there, we spoke with the hospital. We spoke with the person in charge of casualties, and we spoke with the victims,” Isa Sanusi, AI’s Nigeria director, told a foreign agency.
The international rights group condemned the strike, saying that “launching air raids is not a legitimate law enforcement method by anyone’s standard. Such reckless use of deadly force is unlawful, outrageous and lays bare the Nigerian military’s shocking disregard for the lives of those it supposedly exists to protect”.
It called called on the Federal Government to “immediately and impartially investigate the incident and ensure that suspected perpetrators are held to account”.
Some local residents and injured victims confirmed AI’s claims, recalling their traumatic experience from the tragic side of the raid, conducted by the Air Component of the military’s Operation Hadin Kai.
However, Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, and the Minister of Defence, Gen. Christopher Musa, on the other hand, defended the raid. The governor justified the strike in his reaction a day after the incident. He said the Jilli market had been shut since five years ago.
In a statement by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Media, Dauda Iliya, Governor Zulum described Jilli market as a notorious hub allegedly used by insurgents and their logistics suppliers.
He said: “I have been properly briefed on the airstrike carried out by the Air Component of Operation Hadin Kai on Jilli market, a border town between Borno and Yobe states. Let me state categorically that the Borno State Government closed Jilli and Gazabure markets five years ago.”
But the Yobe State government was more tepid and non-committal in its reaction to the rapid. It said in a statement that an air strike on the area had been conducted near a market that people were attending.
“Some people from Geidam LGA bordering Gubio LGA in Borno State, who went to the Jilli weekly market, were affected,” said the Military Adviser to the Yobe State government,Brig.-Gen. Dahiru Abdulsalam, giving no further details.
The defence minister was, however, more vociferous in his own reaction. In a direct reply to the claims by AI and others who deployed the military strike for allegedly hitting innocent civilians, he said there were no innocent persons there(Jilli market).
“Anybody in that location knew what they were doing. They were there for business with terrorists,” the minister said, dismissing suggestions of operational error or faulty intelligence. He insisted that the military acted on verified information and struck at the right time.
“We moved based on intelligence; we identified the location and we hit the target. It was a deliberate operation,” he said.
According to him, the Jilli area had long been designated a no-go zone due to its use by insurgents and their collaborators. He explained that the location served as a marketplace where individuals supplied food, fuel and materials to terrorist groups operating in the region.
He said: “That place is not a normal civilian market. It is a point where terrorists meet with those who support them, people who bring in supplies, including items used to sustain their operations.”
Gen. Musa contended that economic incentives have driven individuals into such activities, arguing that traders could make significant profits by selling goods to insurgents in remote areas.
He lamented that the continued collaboration between civilians and insurgents is a major factor prolonging the conflict in the North-East, stressing that cutting off such support networks would significantly weaken terrorist groups.
“These logisticians are the ones sustaining them. Without them, the terrorists cannot operate. If Nigerians collectively refuse to support these groups, this war can end much faster,” he said.
The minister also warned that individuals who expose themselves by engaging with insurgents risk being caught in military operations. He said: “If you make yourself available in that environment, you become part of the threat landscape.”
The Presidency, through various spokespersons and the Federal Ministry of Information, also firmly defended the airstrike on the Jilli axis, describing it as a legitimate, intelligence-driven military operation against Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP) terrorists rather than an indiscriminate attack on civilians.
It argued that the target was a known insurgent logistic and coordination hub, designated “Kasu Daulaye” (terrorists’ market), which had allegedly been used by insurgents to transport funds and supplies after being closed by the Borno State Government five years prior.
Criticisms of the Jilli market raid re-echo the recurrent accidental military airstrikes, leading to avoidable civilian casualties as well as the need to maintain delicate balance between anti-terrorism operations and the protection of the civilian population.
However, the Jilli market raid is a bit different. First, Borno State Government confirmed that the market had been closed since five years ago. Second, the state, the military and federal authorities are in consensus that the place is a “terrorists’ enclave” and a Boko Haram/ISWAP logistics base.
The military specifically said it had targeted a location in Jilli “long identified as a major terrorist movement corridor and convergence point for ISWAP terrorists and their collaborators”.
Describing it as “a carefully, well-coordinated planned and intelligence-driven operation”, the military said it had “successfully conducted a precision air strike on a known terrorist enclave and logistics hub located near the abandoned village of Jilli”.
If a market has been shut down, we do not see any justification for any person or group of persons to continue using it unless the motive is sinister. So, it follows that anyone who hobnobs with terrorists or whose commercial activities become deleterious to public safety is an enemy of the state and deserves the maximum punishment.
As Gen. Musa has rightly argued, the wicked collaborations between the civil population and other non-state actors with the terrorists have been a major elixir for sustaining their baleful activities. We believe the military strike against the market is justified, Jilli being a terrorist logistic hub.
However, there are suspicions that some innocent victims might have been caught in the raid in the course of hunting down the Islamic militants. AI, for example, said some of the victims were children, claiming that the organization is in possession of their pictures.
We, therefore, back calls by AI and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for a thorough and an impartial investigation into the raid to determine if there are truly innocent victims caught in it. It is a trite saying that it is better for a thousand criminals to escape than to punish or waste the life of an innocent soul.
It is reassuring that the Nigeria Air Force has, on its own, had ordered an investigation into the incident. The Force said in a statement that it had sent a team “to immediately proceed to the location on a fact-finding mission on the allegation”.
The reports of all the investigations into the airstrike should be made public, while the injured but innocent victims should be treated free and be handsomely compensated. The families of dead victims should also be adequately compensated.
In the final analysis, let the Air Component of our anti-terror war continue to work at achieving improved precision strikes to avoid or at least minimize accidental hits. And like we had said before, achieving this is a technology issue.
This is why we encourage the Federal Government to continue to collaborate with the US and other technologically advanced nations to continue to acquire more modern war capabilities that will make our military more sophisticated technology-wise.
The immediate gain will be our capability to conduct more accurate intelligence, surveillance and renaissance(ISR), strike targets with more precisions and record less civilian casualties.
