Since 2009, Boko Haram has been waging war against the Nigerian state but in recent years the sect gained an upper hand in the conflict, controlling about 14 local government areas at the start of 2015. In many instances, soldiers had to flee from the advancing terrorists who were equipped with superior weaponry than them and had far better intelligence.
Due to the large loss of life brought about by such poor leadership, soldiers of the Seventh Mechanised Division of the Nigerian Army in Maiduguri rebelled and attacked their commanding officer. This led to dozens of troops being court martialed and sentenced to death although the government has since commuted this to 10 years imprisonment.
Speaking yesterday on the Hausa Service of the BBC yesterday, President Buhari accused the Jonathan administration of deliberately provoking the soldiers into mutiny by its actions and then turning round to arrest and prosecute them. He said the past administration sent soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition and his government's investigation into the activities of the Jonathan regime revealed that instead of procuring arms and ammunition for the soldiers, funds meant for the equipment were shared by government officials.
President Buhari added: “We investigated and discovered how funds that were pencilled down for arms procurement were diverted and shared by government officials who served the last administration. The government at that time sent the soldiers to the battlefield without arms and ammunition to prosecute the war, which was what led some of them to mutiny."
Meanwhile, despite the December deadline he had earlier given the military to end terrorism in the affected part of the country, President Buhari admitted that the country might not win the war completely by the end of the month. He, however, said a lot of progress had been made by the military and the terrorists themselves were aware that they could no longer take over communities and local governments like they were doing under the past administration.
“If people are going to be fair to us, they themselves know that the Army is winning the war as you can no longer find any huge number of Boko Haram members in Adamawa and Yobe States. Only maybe in about three local governments of Borno in the area around our borders with Chad Republic but they are no longer in a position to threaten the country, so we have won,” President Buhari added.
Justifying the arrest and ongoing prosecution of arms scandal suspects, President Buhari said the government would use documents that were already in its possession to prove to the courts that the suspects stole. He added that their ill-gotten wealth would be confiscated and the guilty would be jailed.
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