(CNN) -- On Friday, October 17, Alex Badeh, Nigeria's most senior military official,
announced in the Nigerian capital Abuja that "a ceasefire agreement has been concluded" with the terrorist group Boko Haram.
"I have accordingly directed the [military] chiefs to ensure immediate compliance with this development in the field," he said.
More than one government official
followed up with claims
that the release of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted in April was
one of the concessions extracted from the terrorist group as part of
the truce.
Now, more than three weeks later, there's nothing to suggest that Boko Haram is keen on peace.
A video released on November 1
shows a man believed to be sect leader Abubakar Shekau denouncing the
so-called deal and vowing to continue the campaign of terror. The
abducted girls, Shekau taunts, "are in their marital homes." The sect
has also continued to attack and capture towns and villages in the north
east -- including, a week ago, Air Marshal Badeh's home town.
Recent history -- a long
line of failed attempts to negotiate with, or pacify, Boko Haram --
should have inspired some wariness on the part of the government.
The offer was
rejected by someone who claimed to be a spokesperson for the sect, for
two reasons; "first we do not believe in the Nigerian constitution and
secondly we do not believe in democracy but only in the laws of Allah."
At every turn the Nigerian government -- everything from the
president's office, to the military, and intelligence services -- has
demonstrated that it is as confused as the rest of us.
A few months later,
former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo travelled to Maiduguri,
where the group started out from more than a decade ago, to discuss with
the family of Mohammed Yusuf, the sect's founder (whose controversial
death in police custody in 2009 triggered the sect's bloody uprising).
Barely 48 hours after the meeting, the man who hosted Obasanjo on behalf
of the family
was shot dead by unknown gunmen.
In April 2013 the Federal
Government set up a "Presidential Committee on the Dialogue and
Peaceful Resolution of Conflicts in Northern Nigeria." Days later a man
claiming to be a Boko Haram spokesperson rejected the amnesty. This was followed by a Hausa language audio recording released to journalists
in which a man purporting to be sect leader Abu Shekau, said: "We are the ones to grant them pardon. Have you forgotten their atrocities against us?"
Nonetheless, the government pushed ahead with the plan;
the head of the committee announced a ceasefire in July. As 2013 came to an end, Boko Haram intensified its activities, culminating in the abduction of the schoolgirls this April.
Around July this year, presumably inspired by ISIS,
it started to seize -- and hold -- territory.
It was against this alarming backdrop that the news of the latest ceasefire emerged, to much relief from around the world.
Now that the ceasefire
deal has proven to be a sham, several questions linger: What did the
government do to verify the legitimacy of the Boko Haram negotiator?
What was the plan regarding the
swathes of Nigerian territory seized and held by Boko Haram, pre-ceasefire?
And, most importantly,
why did the federal government, aware of how every previous talk of a
ceasefire has turned out, fail to exercise greater caution with this
latest one, even in the face of
valid concerns by those who should know.
The answer to the last
question may be found in the fact of Nigeria's brutal, winner-takes-all
politics. In the general elections forthcoming early next year,
President Jonathan will be seeking a second and final term. It should
have been a walkover for the incumbent, as presidential elections
traditionally are in these parts. But a potential game-changer emerged
last year: a merger of Nigeria's leading opposition parties -- producing
arguably the strongest and most determined opposition alliance a
Nigerian ruling party has ever faced.
Both parties have
stridently sought to capitalize on the Nigeria's dire security situation
in northeastern Nigeria; the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) by
alleging that the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) is sympathetic to Boko Haram and
is sponsoring the insurgency to undermine Mr. Jonathan's government,
and the APC by highlighting the success of Boko Haram as evidence of the
incompetence of President Goodluck Jonathan and his government.
When the news broke --
at a time when opposition presidential candidates were launching their
campaigns, and when speculation was rife that the President was due to
declare his own bid soon -- more than a few people saw it as a move by a
beleaguered government to counter allegations of incompetence, and
shore up its image. The release of the abducted girls would no doubt
have boosted Mr. Jonathan's re-election chances.
It seems likely that it
is this obsession with the approaching elections that fueled the
government's shocking gullibility in this matter; allowing it to be
hoodwinked into going to town with news of a deal swathed in red flags.
The fact that no room
was left for doubt or caution is shocking, considering that it is open
knowledge that Boko Haram, far from possessing a unified command, is
actually a chain of factions varying widely in motivation and method,
presumably "too fragmented to present a common front for dialogue."
The government's blindness -- willful or otherwise -- to that fact should alarm us all. But it's not very surprising.
At every turn the
Nigerian government -- everything from the president's office, to the
military, and intelligence services -- has demonstrated that it is as
confused as the rest of us.
We see this not just in
the desperation, at the highest levels, to believe anything regardless
of how implausible it sounds, but also i
n the supremely careless manner in which information regarding the crisis continues to be managed.
If the past is anything to go by, I'm certain we haven't seen the last of the "ceasefire" announcements.
Soldiers and police officers cordoned off the
area while rescue workers helped survivors to the hospital.
