Two months ago, the Army announced that its chief Buratai has “relocated fully to the North East” to lead the war against BH. “Relocate” & “fully” gave Nigerians the impression that Buratai has moved and will remain there until BH is defeated, but Buratai is now back in Abuja.
He came back yesterday saying they’ve killed over 1,429 and arrested 116. But the army didn’t adduce evidence to support the figure they claimed. Even if we believe the figures and the ones from Chad, the total will be 2,500, which is still less than half of total BH fighters.
BH has 5k-7k fighters. Similarly, both factions of BH continue to kill civilians and raid villages. As I write, the Damaturu-Dapchi-Bayamari road, over 250km, has been taken over by BH fighters. Commercial and private cars have stopped plying that road because of BH checkpoints.
Furthermore, we have recently seen videos of hundreds of BH members praying Eid and footage of their Friday prayer last last week. Clearly, BH hasn’t been defeated. I think Buratai is just making this claim to justify his returning to Abuja from his “full relocation”.
I will repeat for the umpteenth time that we can’t defeat BH with short, one-off operations like the ones led by President Deby and COAS Buratai. This war requires long term offensive planned and launched by all countries in the LC. Otherwise, we’ll just keep moving in circle.
