The Joint Terrorist Force (JTF) And Other Stories—By Jude Egbas

 

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Move over, Sergeant Rogers and Major Al Mustapha; for there is a new Strike Force in town!
Unlike Abacha’s clandestine and nocturnal killer squad, however, these chaps operate in the full glare of the watching world in Nigeria’s Sahel region. Draped in the official Fatigues of the Nigerian Military, they wade through a horde of innocent souls and leave pools of blood in their wake, deploying neither tact nor guile.
A murderous streak is perpetrated on most days in some parts of the North, this way. Unhindered and unchecked, the Joint Task Force (JTF) set up to nip the scourge of terrorism and militancy plaguing some parts of the country in the bud; has sadly morphed into a Gestapo outfit. There is blood on the streets of Maiduguri, Kano, Kaduna and Taraba…..blood of hundreds of innocents now mingle with the blood of a handful of terrorists. All of this blood, some have alleged, find their way to the feet of the JTF.
Blood…and more blood.
Last Monday, members of the JTF embarked on a now familiar killing spree in Maiduguri. Several media sources painted the onslaught as a reprisal attack. An Explosive Device had rented the Maiduguri air, taking with it some members of the JTF. Before anyone could say ‘Force’, the men in uniform had leveled suspected neighborhoods. Some sources had put the resulting death toll as high as 30. The international media, always ready to make a meal of unsavory news coming out of Nigeria, had begun circling Maiduguri. By Tuesday morning, the JTF had swiftly moved to wash its hands off the alleged killings. But there was more….
The Borno State Deputy Governor, Mr Zanna Mustapha had added an altogether comical dimension to the stories making the rounds. Hear him:
“Absolutely it is not true (that innocent people were killed). We went there, we saw some people lying down on the ground, they were sleeping,” he said. “I saw all of them lying down and I saw some of them sitting down. I went there with about 25 journalists and they also saw the people. The residents may have thought all the people were corpses. I also thought they were corpses.” How poor Mustapha could have done with a pair of glasses!
On Tuesday, the JTF had also issued out statements along the lines that because there were no “established or recorded cases of extra judicial killings, torture, arson or arbitrary arrest by the JTF in Borno state”, its officers could not have been involved in extra-judicial killings. The statements were issued by the JTF Spokesperson, Sagir Musa.
Retrospective records however puncture some holes in the Task Force’s hurriedly cobbled alibi. Its modus operandi hasn’t always made for great public discourse.
In July of 2011, the JTF had gone on a rampage in the Budum market in Maiduguri; killing hundreds of people after the dreaded Islamic militia sect, Boko Haram had let fly a bomb in the market, snuffing the lives of three soldiers. Soon after, the market was razed down by the JTF for effect.
In 2010, the JTF had come under severe criticisms from denizens of the Niger Delta for undertaking a raft of human rights abuses including rape, torture and extortion as it set up shop in Nigeria’s oil basin to quell the insurgency of the Militants. Last year, the JTF was alleged to have ended the lives of a dozen young men in Jos from point blank range near the Mai Adiko village in yet another case of a reprisal attack.
Stories abound of the JTF embarking on killing sprees in Kaduna, Kano and Borno in the guise of ‘fishing out terrorists’. Could all the innocents who have lost their lives to the firepower of the JTF be said to be ‘sleeping’ as the Deputy Governor would want us believe? Could the eyewitnesses who first drew the attention of the world to the carnage on the streets of the city not tell between persons answering nature’s call and corpses? Who goes into a deep sleep in an environment where gunshots and explosives are making the rounds, anyway? What are the rules of engagement for the JTF? Who supervises the JTF to ensure they do not step out of bounds?
I will suggest that the JTF may have to fine-tune its strategies geared towards smoking out Boko Haram suspects from silos and huts, moving forward. Rather than go trigger happy at the drop of a hat, some intelligence gathering and superior military techniques could help. Counter terrorism techniques all over the world are not always as brute and savage. In any case, how does the JTF tell a hapless citizen going about his legitimate business from a terrorist draped in similar attire?
The Federal Government would have to step in at this point to keep the JTF in check. You do not want an assemblage of disparate military outfits running amok round the city centers. We cannot simply combat terrorism by deploying the same techniques the terrorists use to inflict pain on the society. It was about time we curbed the killing of several innocents in Nigeria’s troubled north by persons who should be watching their backs.
And in a more serious country, the Deputy Governor who appeared before the world’s media running his mouth like a rabid dog would be out of his job for proving beyond all reasonable doubt that matters of state security are well above his ken.
The writer is on twitter @egbas