Why Nigeria is losing this war

A lack of investment in training, failure to maintain equipment and dwindling cooperation with Western forces has damaged Nigeria’s armed services, while in Boko Haram they face an well-armed, determined foe.

The military still appears to have no idea exactly where the girls kidnapped by the group nearly a month ago are, but denies it lacks the capacity to get them back.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said that Boko Haram has “infiltrated … the armed forces and police”, but the problems go much deeper.

“The Nigerian military is a shadow of what it’s reputed to have once been,” said James Hall, former British military attache to Nigeria.

The military argues that counter-insurgency is something new that they are slowly learning to take on, just as the US military had to learn they couldn’t fight al-Qaeda in western Iraq using conventional warfare.

Jonathan declared emergency in the northeast a year ago, ordering extra troops, but security sources say the armed forces remain overstretched. Perhaps as few as 25,000 service-ready troops face an insurgency over a wide area in the northeast, communal violence across north and central Nigeria and rampant oil theft in the south, one security source says.

Morale is also a problem, said a ground soldier deployed in the northeast — the food was bad, sleeping conditions rough, very few people got their entitled leave, and they lived in constant fear of Boko Haram attacks. “There is just a kind of hopelessness hanging over us,” he said.

Not so their adversaries, whose fearless determination is fuelled by dreams of jihadist martyrdom. “In a typical unit, Boko Haram has between 300 and 500 fighters. It’s not a guerrilla force that you can fight half heartedly,” said Jacob Zenn, a Boko Haram expert at US counter-terrorism institution CTC Sentinel. “It’s getting more weapons, more recruits.”

Their ability to dart over the border into Cameroon gives the militants an added advantage.

Now, as families in Chibok pray for the return of their kidnapped daughters, some fear it may be beyond their armed forces to get them back, and welcome promises of assistance from China, Britain, the US and France. “We don’t believe there is a serious effort at a rescue,” said Lawan Abana, whose two nieces are among the abductees. “The Americans and the others are our last hope.”