Reports on the federal government’s attempts to rescue the abducted 46 schoolchildren and teachers taken from Ogbomosho, Oyo State, appear to have quietened in recent days.
The presidency believes that speaking about the incident gives publicity to the terrorists. Muhammed Idris, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, shares the same sentiments.
At Thursday’s Nigerian Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) security summit, Idris said, “Please take these terrorists and criminals off your front pages. This is what they crave for free of charge.”
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His comments received mixed reactions, as while some Nigerians agree with it, others say there is a need to maintain the conversation so the abductees are not forgotten.
FIJ has now obtained firsthand information about what is happening on the front lines. Some of this information is sensitive, but snippets have made their way into the media recently.
Two weeks ago, reports were rife about how vigilantes made their way into where the Boko Haram sect was holding the abductees but had to retreat after some IEDs exploded, affecting 10 of them.
Insiders have now confirmed to FIJ that three of the 10 eventually lost their lives.
“The area is dense and rigged with IEDs,” one insider told FIJ. “The initial team of local security and troops hit an IED while attempting to rescue them on the day of first entry.”
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Days after the May 15 kidnapping, vigilantes and soldiers made their way into the forest to attempt to rescue the victims, but they were met with resistance.
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Soon after the initial exchange of hostilities, the terrorists began setting up background coverings to mask the location of hostages whose videos they released to the public.
On June 9, a video surfaced in which Rachael Alamu, principal of Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele, in Oriire Local Government Area, begged the government not to play politics with their lives.
The video came after Adebo Ogundoyin, Speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, claimed that the terrorists were demanding N1 billion.
“To bring these children and teachers back, if it is up to you, will you negotiate with terrorists if terrorists ask for weapons, they ask for money, or they ask for concessions on future laws of this land as part of their ransom?
“If you were the governor, would you accept those ransoms? Will you accept that those people should be accepted into that community?” Ogundoyin asked.
Since then, things have cooled after Alamu claimed that the terrorists were not demanding money.
What has followed, sources say, is sustained ISR. In military terms, this means Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.
“ISR operations over their location have been on for weeks now,” they told FIJ. “The USAFRICOM is now involved, bringing in advanced surveillance systems. On Tuesday, both the Nigerian Air Force and the US Air Force conducted ISR ops over the location for almost seven hours.”
This source also told FIJ that there had not been any finality to the government’s decision on how to approach the rescue mission, as both kinetic and non-kinetic approaches were being considered.
Credit : FIJ
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