Boko Haram: Governor says battle against militants being sabotaged

A governor in north-east Nigeria has suggested efforts to defeat jihadist group Boko Haram are being undermined by elements of the security apparatus.

Borno State’s Babagana Zulum said President Muhammadu Buhari needed to know sabotage within the system was frustrating work to end the insurgency.

Babagana Zulum was speaking bluntly days after his heavily armed convoy suddenly had to flee a town near Lake Chad because of sustained gunfire.

The army blamed Boko Haram.

The governor suggested soldiers were behind it and once again used the word sabotage.

Babagana Zulum also questioned why the Nigerian army was stopping thousands of displaced people from returning home to their fields whilst soldiers were instead cultivating the land.

Governor Zulum is not the first person to essentially suggest that corruption within the military is prolonging the people’s suffering in north-east Nigeria.

In June 2014, 10 generals and five other senior military officers were  found guilty in a court-martial of providing arms and information to Boko Haram, several Nigerian newspapers reported, though the military denied the accusations.

The developments  followed months of allegations from politicians and soldiers who told The Associated Press that some senior officers have been helping the armed group, and that some rank-and-file soldiers even fight alongside the rebels before returning to army barracks.

Nigeria’s government and military have come under increasing scrutiny for failing to find hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped in April by the armed group, which wants to carve out a fundamentalist Islamic state in northern Nigeria.

Sources have said that information provided by army officers has helped Boko Haram to ambush military convoys, and in attacks on army camps and outposts in the militant group’s northeastern stronghold.