VANGUARD
PERHAPS, nothing best captures President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s inheritance of the toxic space called
Nigeria from former President Muhammadu Buhari, then the mess in the security and economic spheres.
With a naira swap policy that left much poorer and an energy insufficiency on the one hand, Boko Haram terrorists in the North East, the bandits of the North West and Niger State, the herders/farmers clashes of Benue and Plateau and criminality in Kogi and Nasarawa states in North Central, the IPoB separatist of the South East, the crude oil thieves of the South-South and the ritual killings-for-fame-and-money in the South West on the other hand, Nigeria appears to be a country in the throes of economic and security doom.
Whereas farming activities are hampered by the terrorists creating food security challenges, the IPoB separatists of the South East are destroying the economy of that region with its illegally-mandated sit-at-home Mondays, and the crude oil thieves of the Niger Delta continue to reduce Nigeria’s production output thereby reducing foreign exchange earnings, Tinubu’s work is laid bare before him. Doom looms! Undaunted, however, President Tinubu, this report will reveal, is set to confront the symbiotic challenges of the economy and security with a multi-pronged approach that is expected to create a secure environment which will drive economic growth and also ensure political stability.
This report is a painstaking treatise on how Nigeria got to this point and what President Tinubu plans to do to salvage the situation.
July 2014. Nothing best captures the shambolic security situation in Nigeria today than the lack of trust, in-fighting and activities of fifth columnists within the security sector, leading to the gruesome killing of one Major Timothy Fambiya, nine years ago.
His story is known to some top military commanders of that era because the operation in which he took part was both strategic and very sensitive. Fambiya is a native of Gwoza in Yobe State. Intel extracted from and some made available by detained members of Boko Haram (members of the Jama’atu Ahliss-Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, (western education is evil) suggested that their leader at that time, the now late Abubakar Shekau, was hiding somewhere around the hills in Gwoza.
Top military commanders brain-stormed and after hours of thinking out how to approach the battle, an action plan was hatched. But because of the hilly nature of some parts of Gwoza and the need to be very dexterous in prosecuting the operation, someone with a good knowledge of the area needed to be part of or lead the operation.
Enter Major Fambiya, a young man who was on a course at Nigeria’s Command and Staff College, Jaji, in far away Kaduna. Words got to him that Shekau may be hiding around the hills of Gwoza but the top commanders were hamstrung in proceeding.
According to a General who was in the know at that time, “That was how Fambiya came into the picture. Because he was very familiar with the topography of this town, he volunteered to be part of the operation. The idea was to capture Shekau alive. Unfortunately, as in some of our operations, we believe some people from within, even among the officer corps, may have leaked the information to the terrorists. Mind you, it was from this battle that the story of Shekau’s rumoured killing in 2014, filtered out.
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