Nigeria’s campaign against Islamist Boko Haram insurgents is being hampered by “cowards” within the armed forces, its presidential security adviser said in a rare public signal of unhappiness in the military high command with the effort. Boko Haram’s bloody uprising to carve out a breakaway Islamic caliphate has taken much of Nigeria’s northeast and poses the worst threat to Africa’s most populous state and biggest energy producer and at least three of its neighbours.
Boko Haram claimed a Jan 3 attack on the town of Baga that killed scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians and left the jihadists in control of the headquarters of a regional multinational force including troops from Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Nigerian soldiers fled the area after Baga was overrun.
It was the latest in a recent series of Boko Haram successes that has cast doubt on the commitment of some in the Nigerian military, and 22 officers including a brigadier general are on trial over alleged sabotage in the war effort. “Unfortunately we have a lot of cowards.
We have people who use every excuse in this world not to fight,” Sambo Dasuki, the top security adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank in London.
But, he stressed, “there is no high-level conspiracy within the army not to end the insurgency.” It is highly unusual for senior Nigerian security officials to comment on the counter-insurgency campaign, especially at the level of Dasuki, but it pointed to discontent within the security establishment with the conduct of the fight.
FRENCH VERSION
Campagne du Nigéria contre les insurgés islamistes Boko Haramest entravé par des « lâches » au sein des forces armées, sonconseiller à la sécurité présidentielle a déclaré dans un signalpublic rare de malheur dans le haut–commandement militaire àl’effort. De Boko Haram soulèvement sanglant à se tailler unCalifat islamique séparatiste a pris une grande partie du nord-estdu Nigeria et la pire menace à l’état le plus peuplé de l’Afrique etplus grand producteur d’énergie et au moins trois de ses voisins.
