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At University of Sussex, I studied all Irregular Warfares in the 20th and 21st century, and I’d like to share a few insights from other Irregular Warfares on why I think Nigeria will not win the war against Boko Haram in the next 20 years. THE THREAD 
Nigeria’s broad counterinsurgency (COIN) plan is to outkill Boko Haram. This is simplistic use of brute force. Military spendings from 2011 to 2015 shows that Nigeria spent $16.382 billion on defence, but made little progress against Boko Haram.
In fact, when military spendings were plotted against number of Boko Haram inflicted death, I found that the more we spent, the more deaths we recorded. The more we spent, the more Boko Haram progressed.
Boko Haram knows that we want to outkill them, so they use classic irregular warfare tactics to outmaneuver the military and lead the ill-equipped Nigerian forces into numerous ambushments. #Metele is one of many.
Boko Haram’s ideology may not be too clear, we cannot deny the fact that there is an ideology. And you can’t kill an ideology with simple military force; for every terrorist killed, more fuel is added to the insurgent’s ideology tank for revenge.
Or how do you kill the terrorism that looks down the barrel of your gun and erroneously sees paradise? Until we have a strategy that includes force and counter-ideology, we would continue to lose money, arms, gallant soldiers, and the war itself.
Of all the irregular warfares in the two centuries under review, the closest to the Boko Haram war, in my opinion, is the Malayan War of 1948 to 1960. This war lasted 12 years!
In the first two years, the British army was doing exactly what the Nigerian army has been doing with Boko Haram in the past nine years — exerting military force, and attempting to outkill insurgents.
Like Boko Haram, the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) had a better understanding of the geography and extreme temperatures, and used it as a complimentary weapon against the army;they had the sympathy of the population; and the necessary disappearance and operational agility
MRLA avoided open battle but preferred ambushes & fled along known jungle trails whenever engaged.This made it difficult for the British forces to ascertain whether the enemy had been eliminated or simply melted away to return at a later date. We call it "Technical Defeat"
Same case as Boko Haram: A soldier, raised in the south is sent to Kagoro, Kala Balge, or Sambisa to fight insurgents who were raised in the region. Insurgents who know every nook and cranny of these forests, they use the terrain — which is the soldier’s blind spot — as a weapon
They lay an ambush and kill soldiers for fun. During the Malayan war, security forces conducted sweeps, destroying residences from which insurgents were perceived to have received some sort of support, and due to distrust.
the British army often shot innocent civilians they found running away — so is the case with the Nigerian army. This made the people more sympathetic to the insurgents and made intel gathering next to impossible.
Nigeria in 2014 also hatched a plan; the National Counter Terrorism Strategy (NACTEST), which was updated in 2016. Are you hearing this for the first time? I thought so too.
NACTEST as a COIN plan is ambiguous; has no designated lead ministry or agency, has no clear-cut coordination plan. The strategy as a whole is domiciled under the office of the national security adviser (NSA), who has no statutory role, rather than just advising the president.
The NSA has simply asked all ministries to open counterterrorism desks. Desks! I do not intend to get into the politics of things here, so let's move on with this question; Is there a counter-terrorism desk in your ministry, what do they do?
To defeat a rag-tag fighting force like #BokoHaram or #ISWAP, we need to go back to 1994 and listen to UNDP: “The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts."
"The first is the security front where victory spells out freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want” @UNDP,1994.
We need civil-military operations that ensure we win the sympathy of the population, an understanding of the fighting terrain, economic liberty for potential Boko Haram recruits, and then some sheer military force. This cannot be achieved in a hurry, the earlier, the better.
Thank you for coming to my TED TALK. I am open to further explanations on your various media platform. TV, Radio, Twitter, anywhere. To read the full article, see link: bit.ly/2DPI2vN via @thecableng. Thank you.
