Good news for President Goodluck Jonathan as war with Boko Haram to end soon!!

The head of the Nigerian Army, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minimah, says the war against Takfiri Boko Haram militants will soon end. He made the comments on Thursday as he visited soldiers in the town of Baga, a fishing hub located on the shore of Lake Chad in the far north of Borno State in northeast Nigeria. This is good news for Nigerian incumbent president, Jonathan Goodluck the man widely believe will emerge winner in the upcoming general elections in Nigeria. Nigeria’s military said on February 21 that it regained control of Baga from the Boko Haram extremist group, which had overrun the town on January 3 after two days of clashes. “The war is almost ended. We will liberate Dikwa, Bama, Gwoza, Marte and other places in a few days’ time,” Minimah told the troops. The comments come amid efforts by Nigeria and regional countries to secure and stabilize the volatile region ahead of Nigeria’s general elections on March 28. The vote was initially scheduled to take place on February 14 but was postponed by six weeks due to concerns over security on the polling day. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and his ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have been accused of buying time to revitalize their election campaign. Minimah, meanwhile, described the six-week deadline as “achievable,” adding, “We are still within the timeframe.” 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 in March. The culture of impunity and unchecked state supervised criminality against civilians during military rule under the Northern Military establishment in Nigeria was unprecedented.  This is the culture of impunity that gave birth to claims for Sharia States in some Northern states and coordinated attacks against Christians in Northern Nigeria.  The sharia claims emerged only when Olusegun Obasanjo a Christian from the West was elected as the first democratic President of Nigeria after Military rule. The political motivation for this move using religion a lethal weapon was not lost on keen observers of Nigerian politics nor to the Southern Military establishment and politicians or even Obasanjo. The hidden hand of his military peers from the North behind these acts of destabilization was obvious. This did not happen during the military rule dominated by the Northern Military establishment so also the so-called Fulani herdsmen slaughter of Christians and burning of Christian Churches in the North and the Middle Belt.