The sudden spike in mass abductions across the country in the last one week is a web of tragic paradoxes. They are happening at a time the air wing of our military has, in a renewed gusto that earned our gallant troops momentary thumbs up, been swooping on the terrorists’ camps like bees, raining upon them bombs like cherries from the sky.
This is as the ground forces have been simultaneously pounding them with ferocious ardour in several locations — Zamfara, Katsina, Niger, Benue, Plateau, Kwara States — where terror stalks literally on all fours, significantly degrading their capabilities and upending their logistic networks.
The series of lethal air assaults against the daredevils followed persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions undertaken by the Nigeria Air Force (NAF), revealing the terrorists’ suspicious movements and operational structures, leading to successful Air Interdiction missions that delivered deadly blows.
For the initial days, signs of tempered relief were heaved and for the first time after a long spell, residents in some of these theatres of war slept peacefully.
But then, coming on the trail of the threats of military invasion by the US President, Donald Trump, based on the misplaced narrative of genocide against Christians in Nigeria, the mass abductions are beginning to read like a foreboding, portentous of a sinister game.
The rash of attacks have begun to defy logic both in ferocity and intensity. In a flash of sickening madness and like wounded lions led loose from the lairs, the terrorists began to vent spleen on soft targets across the land and abducted roughly about 423 persons, most of them innocent school girls in just one week! Dozens of persons were also killed in the process of carrying out these abductions.
The most horrendous of the mass abductions was the case of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Papiri, Agwara Local Government Area of Niger State, where a total of 315 pupils and staff were kidnapped last Friday. The figure was initially made up of 303 pupils and 12 staff members of the school.
However, according to the latest update given by the Christians Association of Nigeria (CAN) as at press time on Sunday, 51 of the kidnapped girls have escaped from captivity and already reunited with their families. So, 252 of the girls and 12 staff members are still in captivity.
This makes the Catholic school kidnap the second largest haul in mass abductions made by the terrorists since April, 2014 when the first mass kidnapping involving 276 girls occurred in Chibok Girls Secondary School in Borno State.
The Papiri episode came just days after at least 25 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the fiendish gunmen during an early morning attack on a school in Nigeria’s northwestern Kebbi State. The school’s Vice Principal, Hassan Yakubu Makuku, and a security guard were shot dead for resisting the invaders.
Media reports said the attack on Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State, Danko Wasagu Local Government Area (LGA), occurred around 4:00 a.m., shortly before dawn prayers. The assailants reportedly stormed the school premises through Zamfara forests and operated for two hours unhindered.
Two days earlier, at least 16 vigilante members were killed and 42 residents kidnapped when bandits also attacked Mashegu Local Government Area of Niger State.
The following day after the Kebbi tragedy, gunmen also swooped on a Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) at about 4pm in Eruku, Ekiti Local Government Area of Kwara State, killing three worshippers and abducting 38 persons, including the pastor.
As their wont, the kidnappers soon established contacts with some of the relations of the kidnap victims, demanding N3million on each of their 38 kith and kin in their (kidnappers’) den. But shortly before press time, the Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq, announced the rescue of all the 38 Eruku CAC kidnap victims. This was confirmed in a statement signed personally by President Bola Tinubu.
Earlier penultimate Saturday, bandits had attacked Fegin Baza village in the Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State, killing three persons and abducting at least 64 others.
About 14 people, including 11 women and three children, were kidnapped in another attack on Sunday by bandits, who launched a fresh assault on Tsohuwar Tasha village in the Ruwan Doruwa Ward of Maru Local Government, Zamfara State.
An armed gang suspected to be bandits also stormed Sabin Birni area of Sokoto State, killed two people and abducted 15 others, including four nursing mothers and babies.
The sudden surge in mass abductions and killings are deeply troubling. Things are spiraling into a state of anomie. The whole thing reeks of perfidy, coming on the wake of the genocide narrative vis-a-vis US President’s threat. The air of suspicion pointing to sabotage underpinning most of the rash of attacks and abductions is thick.
In the Kebbi case, for instance, the authorities have begun to probe why the heavily armed soldiers deployed in Maga secondary school, following intelligence reports warning of a possible terror attack against the school, withdrew 30 minutes before the kidnappers struck.
The same sabotage theory is being read into the Niger State St. Mary’s Catholic school kidnap saga. The state government has also begun to probe why the principal of the school, one Felicia Diyah, ignored the government’s directive for all boarding schools in the North Senatorial District to temporarily shut down following the intelligence from the Directorate of State Security (DSS) indicating that terrorists might attack soft targets like schools in the area.
The state government found it puzzling why the principal, in flagrant disregard for the sensitive security alert, went ahead to reopen the school for academic activities, thereby imperiling the girls and without informing both the state government and the proprietor, an Irish man, who had repeatedly shut all his schools, including St. Mary’s, following the government’s directive and relocated.
The tragic killing of a highly respected military commander of the 25 Task Force Brigade, Borno, Brig-Gen. M. Uba, by militants from the Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) appears to have drawn home the sabotage theory indicating that non-state actors are working in cahoots with moles in the system.
The moles supply them sensitive information such as the movements of troops from time to time. This perhaps explains the rash of grisly ambushes being periodically mounted for the troops by terrorists.
Brig-Gen. Uba’s convoy ran into a sustained gunfire in one of such ambushes while returning from a patrol near Wajiroko village in Borno State. He was eventually captured and publicly executed along with four of his men. It is unfortunate that a lot of fine officers and men of our gallant Armed Forces have been wasted in similar circumstances.
It has come to the stage where President Tinubu has to exercise his wide executive powers to halt the nation’s descent into anarchy. He may have to possibly go unconventional if he has to, to assert the nation’s sovereignty, declare total war against these vile elements called bandits and insurgents and put them out of business once and for all.
The blueprints released by the National Chairman of Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu Support Group (AATSG), Otunba (Dr) Abdulfalil Abayomi Odunowo, on the way forward on the banditry challenge, urging total mobilization against the banditry crisis, are simply top notch and very pragmatic in reinvigorating the anti-terror war.
According to him, the Nigerian military and intelligence community are in possession of the comprehensive battle- tested, counter-insurgency blueprints that can effectively tackle the present banditry challenge.
The blueprints, cooling off in the shelf, were crafted by veterans of the Sambisa campaign and provide the following integrated strategies or action plans:
- Kinetic Operations: Deploying rapid-response strike forces to dominate and clear our forests.
- Financial Strangulation: Seizing all illegal mining sites and dismantling the domestic and international financial networks that support these terrorists.
- Border Sterilization: Securing our porous borders to halt the flow of weapons.
- Community Intelligence: Empowering local communities to become the frontline of information and resilience.
Mr President is, in addition, admonished to do the following:
- Declare a State of Emergency on banditry in all affected states.
- Authorize and fund the immediate, full-scale implementation of existing military plans.
- Initiate a comprehensive crackdown on the economic enablers of banditry, from illegal mining to ransom networks.
We enjoin President Tinubu to implement these blueprints to the letter towards ending the insecurity nightmare and rechanneling the nation back to the path of sanity. History will not forget him if he does.
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