The Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has explained why the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist groups has lasted for 16 years.
The group began sophisticated attacks, initially against soft targets, but progressed in 2011 to include suicide bombings of police buildings and the United Nations office in Abuja.
The government’s establishment of a state of emergency at the beginning of 2012, extended in the following year to cover the entire northeast of Nigeria.
Apart from the killing of tens of thousands of innocent citizens in the region, about 2.3 million people have been displaced by the conflict since May 2013.
Appearing on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Friday, the Chief of Defence Staff highlighted issues that might have led to the military’s prolonged battle with the insurgents.
“This Boko Haram thing is a lot. Then I tell you this, for them to have survived for 16 years and are still fighting, how are they getting their funding? Who’s sustaining them? Because they cannot just be doing it actively just like that.
What I tell people is- no country should allow this kind of thing to commence. It is a difficult operation to eradicate, extremely difficult.
“Because before now, when we had the conventional kind of warfare, you are fighting a country. You know you’re fighting for territory. You want to achieve something.
Now you are fighting with people that have nothing to lose. It is an ideology they have in their minds. They believe they are right and you are wrong. He believes if he kills you, he’s getting a blessing. If you kill him, he’s going to heaven. That’s absolutely nothing to lose.