The Nigerian Army’s satanic response to CNN report By Christian Maurice

CNN’s Nic Robertson published a report
on Thursday on the Nigerian army’s war
against Boko Haram. Part of the fallout
from that report was a claim by an
anonymous officer that the army is so
neglected that they even have to
individually pay for their own uniforms.
The soldiers don’t ever benefit
from the billions allocated to the
defense budget, he explains. He
even had to buy his own uniform.
“The troop morale is actually very
low, very low, because we are not
issued a uniform, we buy the
uniforms ourselves,”
Worse, he says that sometimes it’s
difficult to identify who is who in the
battlefield.
When they go into battle, no one
has the same uniform, so when they
run from Boko Haram it’s chaos.
They don’t know who is friend or
foe — whom to shoot and whom to
help.
Till date, many families do not know
what’s happened to their husbands, sons
and fathers. However, the Nigerian
army’s best response to this damning
report was to call it satanic.
Someone needs to remind our military
officials that the war is not against
demons and principalities but against
Boko Haram. If this is the mentality
they are using to prosecute the war,
then we might as well pack our bags and
vacate this country for the marauding,
blood thirsty bandits.
Let it be known that there is nothing on
the CNN report that Nigerians do not
know already. Years of corruption and
abandonment have eroded the integrity
and honour of this once proud and
noble institution. What is unsaid though,
is that playing the ostrich will not
develop the strategic plans needed to
win this war. It is misguided human
errors like this that has come back to
haunt us and for which we are
needlessly sacrificing our officers and
men in the front lines.
To be realistic, it is not for lack of
funding that the army is a shamble
today. Since 2012, our defense budget
has accounted for about 18% or more of
our national budgets
2009 – $1.864 billion
2010 – $2.112 billion
2011 – $2.784 billion
2012 – $5.947 billion
2013 – $6.821 billion
2014 – $5.291 billion
2015 – $5.974 billion
What is at stake is whether these funds
are actually deployed to the ends for
which they were allocated. From all
indications, this is not so. When soldiers
are asked to pay for injuries sustained
in the battlefield, that is devilish; when
soldiers have to pay for their own
uniforms, that is evil; and when we send
our men and women to the battlefield
ill-equipped to die, that is satanic.
To gain some insight to the neglect our
defense forces have endured, we take
as an example the 2014 budgetary
breakdown. According to
http://www.defenceweb.co.za , Nigeria’s total
defence and security budget during this
period was US$5.29 billion of which only
a fraction of it, US$1.9 went to the core
defense arms of Navy ($440 million),
Army ($830 million) and Airforce ($460
million) while US$1.72 went to the police.
What was done with the balance is left
to the imagination especially as over $
400 million was allocated to the office of
the National Security Adviser alone!
What we do know however, is that in the
4 years from 2010 to 2013, investment in
hardware for the sector is 3 times lower
than what they were 30 years ago.
The result is our reality today. Boko
haram is beating our armed forces on all
fronts, gaining territories the size of
Belgium on Nigerian land. Our military is
demotivated, so much so that they are
unable to wage a conventional war much
less a terrorist one.
Rather than threatening hell and
brimstone on the so-called
“disgruntled” officer that spoke to CNN,
The Nigerian military hierarchy should
bury their heads in shame. By their
utterances, they should be held
responsible for wilfully undermining the
safety , purpose and lives of the men
and women who are defending our
fundamental freedoms in the North
East. I find nothing more obscene , more
satanic than that.