Anti Boko Haram coalition to launch major offensive in March

Niger, Chad and Cameroon are planning a major ground-and-air offensive due to start from the end of next month, a senior Niger military official told Reuters.

The Islamist group, which has killed thousands of people in a six-year insurgency in Nigeria, has fought fierce battles with the three countries' armies in southern Niger and northern Cameroon, near Nigeria's borders, in recent weeks.

Chadian forces have made incursions into Nigeria to push back the jihadist fighters, hundreds of whom have been killed.

Military chiefs will meet soon in the Chadian capital N'Djamena to finalise strategy for the 8,700-strong task force of troops from Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin and Niger, said Colonel Mahamane Laminou Sani, director of documentation and military intelligence of Niger's armed forces.

"All we are doing right now is stopping Boko Haram from entering Niger: if they attack our positions we push them back a certain distance and Nigeria pushes from the other side to contain the situation," he said, on the sidelines of the annual U.S. sponsored 'Flintlock' counter-terrorism exercises in Chad.

"There are initiatives by our countries to make sure Boko Haram doesn't get out of control, but we have a deadline of end-March to put the joint force into practice," he told Reuters late on Wednesday.

Boko Haram in Nigeria is a child of Nigerian history and the impunity of Northern Nigeria’s Military establishment. Armed conflict is part of Nigeria history. It is also a business which has enriched many.

People including generations unborn learn from history. The savaged brutality meted on civilians and civilian objects in Nigeria pre-exist Boko Haram.

These acts of impunity were some of the methods deployed by successive military regimes, most of them from Northern Generals to accede and sustain power.

The ongoing slaughter by Boko Haram follows the same pattern which in 1966 led to the Nigeria/Biafra War.

The underlying cause of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Southerners, mainly of the Ibo ethnic groups in the North was never comprehensively investigated, if at all.

There is no gainsaying that had the crimes been investigated, the result would have pointed to some powerful individuals within the Nigerian Military structure of Northern origin.

For these, political power and control of the economy could only be attained through scapegoating communities whom they perceived as serious competitors.

The Nigerian/Biafra War was a curse on the conscience of the nation but a blessing to the Northern Military establishment. Many of these Generals made fortunes from the war and took the opportunity to entrench themselves in power.

Olusegun Obasanjo like Good luck Jonathan came to power during that period as a beneficiary of the sad spoils of death. They were considered outsiders or trespassers to their God-ordained power.

For this reason, the country had to be made ungovernable to prove them and any person outside the North unfit to defend the constitutional order, national cohesion and republican values.

Under these dire circumstances, the Northern Military establishment, their feudal and religious confederacy would step in and take back power through democratic or other means. This is the rationale of the unfolding drama in the election coming up soon.