A Nigerian soldier (name withheld) involved in the war against the dreaded terrorists group, Boko Haram in Maiduguri, Borno State capital on Friday revealed that the sect will continue to thrive because of the happenings in the Nigerian army.
Vanguard reports that the soldier in an email sent to them, said he is attached to the Multinational Joint Task Force located in KauKirie Section 3 Baga, insisted that the army lacks modern equipment to fight terrorists, and pointed out saboteurs among others as factors stalling the fight.
The soldier who said he joined the Nigerian army less than three years ago with the purpose of defending Nigerian territory and sovereignty against both external and internal aggression warned that more soldiers will continue to desert the army due to low morale.
Giving account of their battle with Boko Haram, the soldier said after six months training, troops were drafted to Maiduguri to engage insurgents. He said he was initially enthusiastic about fight the bloodsucking demons that have caused innocent Nigerians pains without a just course. He said not quite long in Borno, himself and his colleagues realized that they were in a different army from the one they thought they had joined, because it was highly politicised, demoralised, lacks discipline and did not weapons to fight.
He therefore listed some of the major challenges hindering their operations to include lack of intelligence gathering and increasing cases of saboteurs in during assault. He recalled an incidence when their driver refused to take a particular route that we ordered to ply; he said they did not argue when he took the decision, which was what saved their lives as they found out the next day that terrorists had laid ambush waiting for them. He said the militants angrily killed every civilian that passed that route on that day after waiting for them.
The soldier further revealed that on July 31, 2014, Boko Haram attacked their camps, killed two of the colleagues, set the camp ablaze, while 19 soldiers were declared missing. He said all the soldiers ran away from the scene, before they were later rescued by Chadian soldiers.
According to him, seven soldiers came back to base while 12 were confirmed dead.
“As I write this, their corpses have not been recovered. In fact, they were left unburied and left to decompose like animals” he said.
He said the incidence killed the morale of soldiers, which had resulted to increased deserters every day. He said those of them yet to desert were surviving by the grace of Almighty God. He said bullets are rationed to soldiers to go and fight highly equipped terrorists with state of the art weapons. He said his gun and that of some other soldiers had locked severally in battlefield, and noted that political leaders and Military hierarchy were gambling with the lives of soldiers.
“They are just sacrificing our lives for nothing. On several occasions, when we go for operations and come under heavy attacks, when we call for reinforcement, there will not be any, and if they decide to send, it takes several hours if not days. We have been having problem with intelligence gathering since we came here. It is absolutely difficult to use non-Northerner for intelligence gathering because of unwillingness of the indigenes to cooperate” he said.
The soldier said most of his colleagues from the area are sympathetic to Boko Haram, and stated that the terrorists may continue to have the upper hand in the war because of the operational problems he had earlier mentioned.
Meanwhile, the unknown soldier revelation is contrary to the statement issued by Col. Timothy Antigha of the Nigerian Army Public Relations Directorate, who claimed that the soldiers morale were very high.
It would be recalled that on August 20, 2014, BBC reported that Nigerian soldiers were no longer willing to risk their lives in the fight against the dreaded Boko Haram sects until they are provided with better and more sophisticated equipments, while the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.- Gen. Kenneth Minimah had earlier revealed that some soldiers had abandoned the force over fear of being killed by Boko Haram.
