Comrade Omolubi Newuwumi, a security expert and activist, in this interview takes a look at the renewed Boko Haram offensive in Nigeria and other security issues.

BY CHARLES KUMOLU

Despite the overhauling  of the military, the rate  of insurgency has escalated. Against that backdrop, would you say that the security agencies are winning the war?

They are not winning the war and they cannot win the war and there are two reasons why they cannot and are not winning the war. One, the political will is not there, two; let me borrow the word of the Borno State governor, Shetima, who said that the Boko Haram insurgents are more financially motivated than Nigerian soldiers.

What I understand from this is that the Federal Government that declared a state of emergency in this state does not have a proper weekly record of what is happening there. They must have a dossier/report on weekly basis to know if they are winning the war or not. Can we say or can the government say  that the emergency has achieved its purpose. Of course no.

They are not winning the war. Let us not deceive ourselves with what the military is saying that they have intelligence report on  Boko Haram. We should ask ourselves what  they have done so far since the emergency rule was declared in these states.

When you talk of motivation, motivation comes in different forms, now since the deployment of troops to these state,  what are the Emirs and chiefs doing  to guarantee the success of the emergency rule?

Do you think there are external forces backing the sect members?

I dont think so and I don’t  want to agree that they have more sophisticated weapons than the Nigerian military. When the whole thing started, when they want to acquire weapons, they went to police stations and barracks to get weapons.

This is where they started. I hope you know that arms are also assembled in the North. It is a well known fact that  AK47 rifles are assembled here in Nigeria.  So I do not think they are bringing anything from outside this country.

It is what we have here that they are using. And that is where the issue of motivation comes in because in a situation where you take a troop to a particular place outside his own environment and you forget that he or she needs to eat, the family he left behind has to feed, those people might look for a way to feed themselves and by so doing engage in many corrupt practices.

On amnesty for Boko Haram members?

If you give amnesty to Boko Haram and probably create a ministry for them just like the case of the Niger Delta, one day the Igbo and Yoruba will also arise and take up arms. So it is not a good practice. It just the same thing as in the Niger Delta crisis, some Niger Deltans also infiltrated the government then, it is just that it was not revealed then.

If I take you back, the Niger Delta crisis did not just start from nowhere,  the foundation was resource control.  I was a member of the South-South People’s Conference which today metamorphosed into the South-South People’s Assembly. So the agitation did not just start from nowhere, people met and put heads together and took decisions before whatever you see in the open took place.