Winning Hearts And Minds Immediately President Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, I tried to follow the activities of the military in those states as closely as I could. It was quite a daunting task doing that as all telephone networks had been disabled by the military. Fortunately, no one has yet been able to disable the Thuraya network. Not many people still remember the Thuraya phone, but in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa they do. There appears to be a consensus that the military has tried all it could to minimise the collateral damage that is usually associated with the cleaning-up job of this type. And the citizens and denizens also see that the soldiers are deliberately trying to protect innocent people. They have tried very hard to avoid the kind of human rights violations that they had been accused of in the past. And it should therefore surprise no one that the hearts and minds of the people of the affected states, which are also major battlefields in the fight against terrorists, are already being won. Last week in Maiduguri, the epicentre of the insurgency, several youths braved all the odds and started helping to fish out and hand over known Boko Haram insurgents to the JTF. It was so serious that a father called in the JTF to arrest his own son, who subsequently got shot dead when he tried to escape. If this trend continues, it will not be long before the insurgents are completely routed. This is hoping that the JTF has learnt an important lesson here and will do all they can to continue to win the hearts and minds of the people.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:37:59 +0000
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