Of Boko Haram frustrations and beggarly posturings By Bukar Raheem 

Although, an arrogantly self-confessed criminal weakens the instincts of pity, but agents of Boko Haram Terrorists (BHTs) are invoking this piteous beggarliness in Nigerians. These sadists are desperate, confused, angered and lost in the mesh of the mountain of silhouettes of the reality on the defeat of terrorism in Nigeria by the Nigerian military.

Likewise, extinguished Nigerian terrorists have been plunged in the season of bad dreams. It’s another predicament and a riddle that would never be resolved. Relentlessly tormented by the spirit of evil to do worse things, but impeded by a coercively imposed helplessness which has confined them to incapacitated oblivion and an inability to satisfy their appetite for blood and arson, the camp is in hysteric disorderliness. Terrorists can no longer strike or detonate their lethal bombs recklessly anywhere in Nigeria anymore.

The defeat and end of BHTs in Nigeria and the Northeast is an experience they least expected would come too soon. But it’s real! And it is national anthem that terrorists’ reign has been brutally terminated by the Nigerian military and Nigerian soldiers who led the final onslaught have also performed terrorists’ final funeral rites in Sambisa forest, insurgents’ most fortified fortress. It is now a training ground for the Nigerian Army.

Nigerians and indeed, the world know that terrorists in this West African country are licking their wounds in various hideouts and locations outside of Nigeria. They now vainly wish another opportunity to re-stage the previous drama of violence, when they drove in lengthy convoys like state chief executives or sneak into public places to detonate lethal bombs, invade security formations or government offices freely.

Terrorists  recall with much sadness their sudden impotence to violently seize whole communities for days, capture and abduct innocent Nigerians in Gwoza, Baga, Chibok, Damaturu, Biu, Pulka, Mallam Fatori, Gujba, Konduga, Giwa, Abuja or Kano among others.

More to insurgents sorrow,  Boko Haram insurgents recount with deepening displeasure the curtailed laxity to foist their insignia in captured  territories under Nigerian sovereignty, where they dethroned  traditional rulers. And thereafter, mockingly release on Youtube videos footage of threats and obscene pictures of the heinous crimes they have committed against humanity. They are powerless to attack military formations, which was their favorite past time before May 2015.

While terrorists have been absolutely decapitated and the few survivors have taken the “wise” decision of fleeing Nigeria; the agents are more pained at the stark reality of the termination of terrorism in the country. These soulless agents and sponsors are extremely vexed at the abrupt termination of the “business” of terrorism and the treasures they savoured when the ignominious and reprehensible crime of terrorism festered.

Like their terrorists foot-soldiers, these agents and sponsors are angered about the sudden end of the feasting on the blood of the innocent in Nigeria. Their spirit is more dampened with the preparedness of the Nigerian army as reflected in their Operation Crackdown, in the Northeast to crush any remnant of insurgency. And there is no hope that the reign of terror would ever germinate anywhere in the country again.

So, the agents are pulling the last strings to emptily reassure insurgents, through fake news of renewed terror attacks mainly to create fear and cause confusion. This is after these agents have failed to convince runaway terrorists to resume their usual atrocities, having been completely scared to the pants by the military.

But unfortunately, these terrorists agents and sponsors have also laughably famished fresh ideas to prosecute a war they held dear to their hearts. And they have resorted to old tricks and weak antics in the desire to animate a dead war or give it the semblance of enlivenment. They have resurrected to the cyberspace terrorism war against Nigeria. They scheme to rubbish the prevailing peace and rebuilding process in the Northeast by circulating in the media fake news about Boko Haram terrorists fresh exploits. Social media platforms are used to irregularly publish awful, but fake figures of terrorists’ strikes in the Northeast, to feign an imagined strength of insurgents.

But it is hardly making any sense or impact anymore to anybody, as most discerning Nigerians who observed them over time, noticed the fakeness and now gleefully ignore their doomed propaganda. Funnily, terrorist agents and sponsors have forgotten this soon how the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt. Gen. Tukur Yusufu Buratai, the ombudsman of the counter-insurgency campaigns detected the cyberspace aspect of the Boko Haram terrorism war quite early in the day. Buratai know the nuances of such wars and never spared any opening to happenstance.

Measures were not only hatched to counter terrorists’ vile propaganda, but the Nigerian Army through its Directorate of Public Relations also outclassed terrorists in the field of cyberspace terror war. American Secretary of States, Mr. Rex Tillerson, applauded Nigeria for the adoption of this approach recently when he met with about 68 countries of the world to dialogue on strategies to end terrorism in the world. He emphasized fighting of terrorists very hard on the cyberspace like in the battlefield.

In Nigeria, the army public relations pointedly outsmarted these terrorists’ agents and the admission of defeat by insurgents is the aggregation of these variables and dimensions of the war manifest in the triumph of Nigerian troops nay Nigerian masses.

Therefore, it is inconsequential to relapse into the known and dismantled or countered strategy of cyberspace terrorism hypes. Unfortunately for terrorists, communication has been simplified and made easier. Nigerians independently verify such reports on same social media platforms, only to discover their fakery and none is panicked or unperturbed by it. In addition, Nigerians have vested unshakeable trust in the competence and reliability of the Nigerian Army to confront and subdue insurgents within or externally in the case of any emergency.

Just recently, attempts to instill fear in the minds of the people in order to confer beggarly relevance on themselves, terrorists’ agents claimed in a syndicated news report on social media that BHTs attacked Pulka a village in Borno state and abducted 22 women. But the attributions of the patently discreditable news story were doubtful as much as the contents itself.

The reporter attributed it to an unidentified source in  Bulama. But could it be that the victims of terror attacks in Pulka had no tongues and voices to speak about their dilemma and that’s why a quoted anonymous source in Bulama, another location entirely had to cry more than the bereaved?

But even before the Director, Army Public Relations, Brigadier General Sani Usman, faulted the report as false, there were counter postings on social media platforms discountenancing the news as fake.

But Pulka, one of the villages in Gwoza, which was captured by terrorists, but liberated in 2015 is not under any threat of terrorism as enunciated by the fake news anchored by terrorists agents. It is yet another example of a bad outing by terrorists agents who have poor skills at fabricating lies and pushing cheap propaganda for public consumption. It is nothing more than the musings of a terror sect whose soul, sound and nucleus have been demystified, deflated, pierced with an arrow and defeated by the Nigerian Army.

However, Nigerians must not go into slumber, but remain vigilant. Desperate agents of BHTs are still lurking in dark corners and ever willing of stirring fake alarms, the only weapon at their disposal currently. But public vigilance can expose these agents to security agents who will instantly act to defray their potency to prolong the fast recovery of Nigeria’s Northeast from the claws of terrorism.

Buratai has consistently preached this as the only way Nigerians can prove and justify to the army, their gratitude for the enormous sacrifices in defeating terrorists in Nigeria. It will further prove that Nigerians cannot only win the peace and defeat all terrorism propaganda, but sustain the victory for the development and prosperity of this great black nation, Nigeria.

Raheem is a security strategist and contributed this piece from Barnawa, Kaduna State.