Attack on Governor Zulum’s convoy sabotage on fight against insurgency in North East
Governor Zulum’s convoy was attacked at Baga
By Dauda R. Pam, Maiduguri
The attack on the convoy of Borno state Governor, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum, has been described as complete sabotage in the fight against insurgency in the Northeast and urged the Federal government to peep into the command and control structure of the theater command headquarters.
Speaking to newsmen in an interview on the Baga attack on his convoy, the Governor said “as far as I am concerned, what happened in Baga is a complete sabotage by the military. There is no Boko Haram in Baga.”
He stressed that “I wonder. We have over 1,181 soldiers in Baga, 72 officers,107 soldiers and another 400 soldiers in Mile 4 with about 1,900 solders in Monguno. I see no reason why only 5 Boko Haram elements will stop them from occupying Baga town.”
According to him, “the troops have been in Mile 4 for over one year, there is complete sabotage, the problem is not with President Buhari, or General Buratai, but the command and control structure, there is need to look into the command structure.
“We have over 80,000 IDPs in Monguno, they cannot continue to depend on INGO and others for food, we have to create the opportunity for them to go back to their communities and continue with their business and farming activites, after Sallah we are going allow people to go back to kukawa and we will give time to the military, if they will not clear Baga, we will mobilized our hunters, CJTF, and Vigilantes to recapture Baga , we cannot continue like this, people have taken their destiny in their hands,” he added.
The governor also visited Kukawa town headquarters of the local government before proceeding to Baga to inspect the Lake chad water, which will provide job opportunities to over 10 million people who engaged in farming and fishing activities.
It could be recalled that members of the Boko Haram insurgents had attacked and sacked residents of Baga town including the headquarters of Multi National Joint Task Force ( MNJTF) and hoisted their Flags in 2015 which has since been reclaimed by the Joint Multi National Forces and since then there has been no civilian presence in the town.
Following the recent intimidation by unscrupulous armed bandits against governor Zulum’s convoy, I’m beginning to wonder why it shouldn’t be cost-effective to complement the travelling/commuting security detail of such VIPs (i.e. president, governor, etc), with surveillance UAVs (a.k.a. “drones”) instead of manned aircraft, to keep an eye on the vicinity or “security bubble” around such VIPs during their movement around volatile locations.
If such unmanned assets had been in operation during Zulum’s movement that day, the UAV’s cameras could have been trained on the gunshot sources just by the UAV pilot observing which direction security personnel were trying to focus on. Zooming-out with the visible and thermal vision cameras, I don’t see why the hoodlums wouldn’t have been spotted from above for coordinated localisation of the threats by security personnel on the ground.
I know how cheaper it is to operate UAVs in comparison to their manned counterparts, what I don’t know is why Nigeria’s UAV assets spend more time existing for decoration than being deployed prolifically (not just for tactical air strikes by light-attack aircraft) i.e. monitoring “security bubbles” (area-point-defense and basic-point-defense zones) around convoys requiring protection.