C-JTF, Kashim and potency of collaboration

It will soon be ten years since the first shot which ignited the Boko Haram insurgency in Maiduguri was fired and ever since, peace has eluded Borno State in particular even though at several times as it unfolded, there were instances of relative respite owing to the gallantry and fire power of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Nevertheless, there are many angles and perspectives to how the insurgency is viewed depending on what narrative is deployed. While the fight and battles on all fronts lasted, attempts were made by different people and interests to give the campaign certain colors and interpretations in order to exploit the situation for obvious reasons. In this piece, I intend to bring into focus the significance of the roles played by the young men and women whose guts and bravery changed the pendulum of the war. I am doing this to achieve two objectives. Number one objective is to give these young men and women what is due to them in the form of tacit acknowledgement of their uncommon service to their fatherland. I strongly feel that their role has not been fully recognized nor properly situated and appreciated. Secondly, the role played by Governor Kashim Shettima, in encouraging the formation of the civilian vigilante movement, the huge resources he pumped into organizing the volunteers, kitting them, providing logistics, building command offices, paying them stipends and ensuring they work according to acceptable norms have equally been grossly underrated and unduly underestimated.

At every point that any success was recorded in the war against insurgency in the North East, the imprint of the young men and women under the aegis of Civilian JTF will remain not just ineradicable but very defining in the overall management and containment of the ever changing terror tactics of the insurgents. The role of the Civilian JTF, which was initially to create a role for the community to enhance local intelligence gathering and quicken the defeat of the insurgents soon turned into a  tool in effective patrols, combat and blocking duties such that without them, the successes recorded at critical juncture of the campaign would have been difficult to attain. If you live in Maiduguri at the onset of the insurgency you would appreciate the enormity of the problem when the whole civil populace became sandwiched between soldiers of the Nigerian Army on one hand and the Boko Haram insurgents on the other. It was at this point when no one was safe that these young men and women, despite the clear risk to their lives, rose up to the challenge, picked up their sticks and went after the insurgents who by then had succeeded in melting into the community from where they wreaked havoc at will. It was this very action that sent the insurgents running out of the city and hibernating in the bushes from where they changed the pattern of their insurgency to what it has unfortunately become now.

Their patriotism in the face of danger to themselves and their immediate relatives, the passion with which they worked and sacrificed their lives and the fearlessness as they carried just sticks to confront merciless, blood thirsty and fully armed insurgents is in itself a lesson and a storyline worthy of making their selflessness an iconic national treasure. The fact that they succeeded in neutralizing the insurgency out of the city and the cornerstone they become in the ultimate management of the insurgency makes their story a source of inspiration to other flashpoints in the country.

It is vital at this point to note that the civilian JTF format was introduced during the Kashim Shettima years. The same government went about fine-tuning, reorienting and remodeling the concept as well as providing the required support needed to achieve set objectives. It recently came to light that the Kashim Shettima government has so far co-opted and is managing a total of 20,000 members in the Civilian JTF group across the state and apart from providing their needs to be effective, the state government is paying their monthly salaries, funding their continued training and restocking them with the essential equipment to perform. The commitment of the state government under Kashim Shettima did not end with the funding of the activities of the Civilian JTF. Supporting the security forces has also taken a chunk of the state’s re

sources and even the war commanders have not only acknowledged the potency of the role of the C-JTF in operations across the state, but also the inviolability of the unfettered support of the state government to the prosecution of the war across the region. This is why it is unthinkable for anyone to question the commitment of the government of Borno State which has given so much.  But sadly, we live in a country where the theory of complicity is gaining traction. Can you believe that there are people who assume that right from the beginning of the insurgency up to the point where the insurgents developed the capacity to conquer and administer territories as well as take the fight to army formations and cart away ammunitions, there are very visible shortcomings on the part of the security forces for their inability to work out strategies for containment of the crisis and allowing it to snowball into the big fire it has become today? They point to the begging opportunities to nip it into the bud but for high level corruption in the purchase of arms and ineffective coordination and obsolete war strategies that have dogged the prosecution of the war over the years. This buck passing, back and forth, is the irony of our situation.

Bala wrote in from New GRA Maiduguri