By Yinka Odumakin

THE bloodiest attack ever by the “degraded” Boko Haram terror group against our military took place on Monday, November 19, 2018. The evil sect stormed a military base in Metele village, Guzamala Local Government Area of Borno State and left in their trail sorrow, tears and blood.

“The attack came at about 6 pm on Monday evening,” one soldier who managed to escape the onslaught from the terrorists, told Premium Times. ”When the soldier on top of the observation post alerted that a large number of Boko Haram fighters were advancing, we all got alarmed as we took cover and waited within the base in Metele”.

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The soldier said the terrorists levelled the military base. ”One of the drivers of the gun trucks decided to push through the barbed wire so that other vehicles could follow and escape, but the truck got stuck, that was how many of our soldiers in other vehicles and those on foot were massacred.

Commercial vehicles

“Those that managed to escape with injuries made it on foot through Cross-Kauwa to Monguno where they boarded commercial vehicles; some even sat in the booth of the Golf cars to get to Maiduguri. Boko Haram made away with about seven gun trucks of the Nigeria Army”.

Another unnamed soldier told Reuters that ”the insurgents took us unawares. The base was destroyed and we lost about 100 soldiers. It is a huge loss.”

Other sources told Reuters that many troops are still missing. One soldier disclosed that more troops were killed on Tuesday when they attempted to recover bodies from the initial attack and were ambushed.

“We all flew because we didn’t know where the bullets were coming from,” Reuters quotes the soldier as saying. ”They killed some of us who went to evacuate the bodies of the killed soldiers.

“We left our amoured tanks and weapons. They were all there. The village is still under their control.

“Our troops were completely routed and the terrorists captured the base after heavy fighting,”one senior army officer told AFP, adding that the base commander and three officers were among the dead.

A local vigilante told AFP that the Boko Haram terrorists arrived the army base with 20 trucks while the army and air support did not arrive until after they had ”invaded the base and looted the weapons”.

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This definitely cannot be a happy moment for our troops and one can only pray that God, the Comforter should should take away the pains of bereaved families and colleagues in deep pains as they see all around them the spectre of preventable casualties if we were running a country and not organised confusion.

The truth, however, is that in the kind of insurgency that we currently face in Nigeria you cannot rule out episodic successful operations by terrorists.What has made the humiliating attack on our troops more heart- wrenching is that our response to it as a polity has been more disastrous than the very act itself.

It took our government six days after the bloody attack to find its voice. And when it did speak, it could not find the right words in the circumstance. A statement by Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu lacked the compassion and empathy expected after the long official silence following such a monumental tragedy.

It was all the usual blandness:”No responsible Commander-in-Chief would rest on his oars or fold his hands to allow terrorists to endanger the lives of its military personnel and other citizens. Our loyal forces have proved their strength over the terrorists and we are ready to given them all the needed support in terms of equipment and manpower to succeed in ending the renewed threat. In the coming days, I am engaging the Military and Intelligence Chiefs in extensive discussions on the next steps we shall be taking.”

Meaningless words that provoke serious questions. And the first being: what happened to the $1billion unbudgeted fund that was paid for arms by this government months back? Where are the arms for our troops to repel the Boko Haram terrorists?

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But more fundamental is the report by Wall Street Journal in 2017, that the Federal Government paid Boko Haram $3million to secure the release of some Chibok girls. According to the report :”The plan called for two exchanges. In the first one, Boko Haram would free 20 Chibok hostages in exchange for $1million.