SECURITY

Aljazeera: Boko Haram's Return in Nigeria Under Buhari

According to an Aljazeera report, the Boko Haram insurgency is thriving in Nigeria under the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The report also stressed the need for something urgent to be done to curb the menace of the insurgents. Excerpts:

This is not the Nigeria that Muhammadu Buhari promised us in the build-up towards the presidential election. Neither is it the one he promised after he had won.

In a nationally-televised speech, hours after his declaration as president-elect, Buhari had told Nigerians: "Boko Haram will soon know the strength of our collective will."

Fast-forward three months, and it instead looks as if it was the Boko Haram commander who directed that statement towards the Nigerian people.

In less than three months of Buhari's reign, the gory era of terrorism is back in Nigeria, and the insurgents are furiously striking the people again and again.
In the week of July 5, there was not a single day without an attack. In the preceding week, 145 people were murdered in twin raids in the northeastern Borno state. 
On July 16, Boko Haram suicide bombers detonated bombs in Gombe, another state in the northeast, killing 49 people at first count.
In its most recent attack, the insurgents killed at least 47 people in Borno in a trademark bomb blast on August 11.
The constant fear of Boko Haram attacks is not only palpable in the northeast.

Attacks and death threats
In July alone, there have been bomb attacks in Kano, Kaduna, Katsina and Plateau as well.
In the southwest, a Lagos-based journalist, Adeola Akinremi received a death threat from the sect in May.
While Boko Haram may not be seizing territories and controlling local governments at it did under the rule of the former President Goodluck Jonathan, its attacks in the last month - plus a death toll now nearing 1,000 - are a negative turnaround from the victories recorded in the final weeks of Jonathan's presidency.
For much of the Jonathan years, the overriding public complaint about the war against Boko Haram was focused on how the president positioned himself in the aftermath of attacks.
A few weeks before the presidential election, Jonathan - helped by a coalition of Nigerian, Chadian, Nigerien, and Cameroonian forces - seemed to make up for his shortcomings by nearly exterminating Boko Haram from northern Nigeria.
Jonathan may have handed over a battered federal purse with external and domestic debts to the tune of $63.7bn to his successor, but he managed to hand over an insurgency challenge that was lower in scale and intensity than the one he met.
 
Botched progress
Buhari has no excuse for botching all the progress that was recorded before his ascendancy.
It is not known what spell Buhari has cast on Nigerians, but the loss of nearly 1,000 lives in almost two months has not generated the kind of admonishment Jonathan faced in similar circumstances.
(SOURCE ALJAZERA)