Hunters, Boko Haram and a maligned army

The story of David and Goliath remains a popular and fascinating tale. A young shepherd slays a seasoned and —by some accounts— gigantic soldier. This story plays into the narrative of the underdog emerging triumphant despite overwhelming odds.

And everybody loves a victorious underdog. Everybody likes to see the big, bad bully get his comeuppance. It is in this context that we need to interrogate the uplifting, yet highly implausible accounts of hunters with Dane guns overpowering Boko Haram insurgents armed with rocket propelled grenades and armoured vehicles.

Additionally, the reported victory of hunters over Boko Haram terrorists is not just about portraying the Nigerian Army as either cowardly, incompetent, or both. In the run-up to the 2015 general elections, it should be clear that the reverberation of such portrayal goes beyond the Army. It aims at discrediting the Army’s Commander-in-Chief, President Goodluck Jonathan.

To grasp the essence of the entire hunters’ charade, look no further than the recent fulminations of Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

According to Odigie-Oyegun’s confused logic, “President Goodluck Jonathan is so desperate to win re-election that it will now appear that there is a secret understanding that our security forces should turn a blind eye to the Boko Haram insurgency, so that the insurgents can occupy as much territory as possible and make elections impossible in these areas, knowing full well these are APC strongholds.

“Otherwise, how does one explain that local hunters carrying Dane guns and amulets are capable of dislodging the dreaded Boko Haram while our once proud army, which has distinguished itself in and out of the country, has failed?”

Therein lies the illogicality of Odigie-Oyegun’s vituperations. How can hunters achieve what, in his own words, “our once proud army, which has distinguished itself in and out of the country, has failed” to achieve? It is simply unfathomable that a man of Odigie-Oyegun’s stature could indulge in celebrating the incredible hunters’ tale without taking cognisance of the fact that he is simply joining in standing logic on its head.

Then again, Odigie-Oyegun is not a man who lacks the ability to discern what is plausible and what isn’t. So in going ahead to indulge this hunters’ victory fantasy, it must be because he is interested in perpetrating the narrative of a failing Army. In so doing, Odigie-Oyegun continues the APC’s self-defeating tactic of maligning the Army, hoping ultimately to undermine the Army’s Commander-in-Chief. What a crying shame!

As the Canada-based Nigerian journalist, Tunde Asaju, posted on his Facebook page, “Some stories should not be written. The story of hunters killing 80 haramists breaks every law of plausibility. It doesn’t add up...” Indeed, the hunters’ story beggars belief.

In all this hoopla about a purported victory by hunters, it is easy to forget that the Nigerian Army has foiled many Boko Haram attacks, a number of which simply go either unremarked or under-reported. It is the same self-defeatist negativity propagated by the APC and its vocal media supporters that is behind the continuing attempt to diminish the good work being done by the security forces, including the Army, in stopping bomb attacks.

Lest we forget, at the inauguration of the Victims Support Fund Committee by President Jonathan not so long ago, it was made known that Nigerian security personnel prevent about a thousand attacks for each successful one carried out by the Boko Haram. This statistics, which Jonathan revealed in his speech at the event, was the first official indication of the enormous scale of the insurgency crisis facing Nigeria today.

Speaking on the determination of the Federal Government to crush the terror group, Jonathan said, “It is now just a matter of time. I call on all Nigerians to stand together in support of our security agencies against terrorism. They are working night and day under difficult circumstances. It is unfortunate that when our security personnel prevent 1,000 attacks, it is the one attack that succeeds that makes headline news and tends to portray our security agencies as not doing enough.”

If Nigerian security forces prevent 1,000 attacks for each successful one carried out by Boko Haram, the question all fair-minded Nigerians should ask is: how then can it be said that the security forces are losing the war against Boko Haram? How can the Nigerian Army, which continues to do its best under strenuous conditions, be so maligned by some of the same Nigerians that the soldiers are laying down their lives for?

Whatever the truth may be, it is certainly not encapsulated in the oversimplification which the hunters’ purported victory over Boko Haram represents. But in these times, when the excoriation of Jonathan has gained ascendancy, everything that supports or deepens the narrative of his electoral undesirability — as posited by the APC — is fair game. The end result is the continued maligning of the Nigerian Army to the detriment of the Nigerian nation and her people. What an avoidable shame!

Of course, Boko Haram must be stopped totally. To achieve that, the President and the security forces, including the Nigerian Army, deserve support, not condemnation. And portraying a band of hunters as being more effective than the Army, all in a bid to sully the image of Mr President, is not only self-defeatist, but also utterly ridiculous.