The headlines are predictable. They are also dangerously wrong. Every time a high-ranking officer like Brigadier General Dzarma Zirkusu falls in a hail of gunfire in Chibok or Askira Uba, the media apparatus kicks into a familiar gear. They mourn the "hero," they decry the "cowardly" militants, and they wait for the next press release from Abuja promising a "total overhaul" of the security architecture.
It is a cycle of intellectual laziness. Read more on a connected subject: this related article.
If you think the death of a general in the field is a sign of "aggressive leadership" or a "tragic loss to the strategic core," you don't understand how modern insurgencies work. The loss of a general isn't just a tragedy; it is a glaring diagnostic report of a systemic failure in command, control, and the very philosophy of Nigerian COIN (Counter-Insurgency) operations.
We need to stop talking about "militant attacks" as if they are unpredictable lightning strikes. They are the logical result of an army that has become a collection of static targets. Further journalism by Al Jazeera delves into similar perspectives on the subject.
The General is Not the Prize
Mainstream reporting focuses on the rank. It suggests that by killing a general, ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province) or Boko Haram scored a lucky hit.
Wrong.
In a decentralized insurgency, the rank of the person they kill is secondary to the disruption of the node. When a general is killed in an ambush, it reveals that the military’s internal communications and intelligence-gathering are so porous that the most protected assets are effectively walking blind.
The "lazy consensus" suggests that putting generals on the front lines shows grit. In reality, it shows a desperate lack of faith in the junior officer corps. If a Brigadier General has to be physically present to coordinate a response to a local raid, your middle management is broken. I have watched military structures across the Sahel struggle with this "top-heavy" syndrome for a decade. When the top disappears, the bottom freezes. That isn't a war machine; it’s a nervous system with a severed spine.
The Army Base as a Liability
The competitor articles love to use the phrase "attack on an army base." This terminology evokes images of a fortress being stormed.
Let’s dismantle that.
Most Nigerian "Forward Operating Bases" (FOBs) in the Northeast are not fortresses. They are glorified parking lots surrounded by sandbags and demoralized men. The military is obsessed with "holding ground" in a region where the enemy doesn't care about geography.
Isis-West Africa doesn't want to fly a flag over a specific coordinate in Borno State indefinitely. They want to bait the Nigerian Army into staying in one place. By tethering thousands of troops to static bases, the military has surrendered the initiative. They have turned their soldiers into "sitting ducks" who wait to be liquidated.
The logic is flawed. You cannot defend a 150,000-square-kilometer region by sitting in twenty holes in the ground. The insurgents move. The army waits. The result is inevitable: the hunter becomes the target.
Why We Fail at Intelligence
People often ask, "How can the military not see these convoys coming?"
The answer is uncomfortable. It isn’t a lack of drones or high-tech sensors. It is a total collapse of the social contract between the soldier and the local.
Intelligence is a currency. In the Northeast, that currency is devalued. When the military treats every local as a potential insurgent, the locals treat every soldier as an occupying force. The "hearts and minds" rhetoric is a lie told in air-conditioned offices in Lagos. On the ground, it’s a friction-filled relationship where the civilian population finds it safer to stay silent when they see a line of white Toyota Hiluxes moving through the scrub.
If the community doesn't feel the state is more permanent than the insurgency, they will never provide the actionable intelligence needed to prevent these ambushes. Currently, ISWAP offers more "governance" in some pockets—collecting taxes and settling disputes—than the federal government has in years.
The Equipment Fallacy
Whenever a base falls, the immediate cry is for "better equipment." More Tucano jets. More MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles). More tech.
This is a grift.
I’ve seen billions of Naira funneled into hardware that rots in the sun because nobody factored in the supply chain for spare parts. You don't win a bush war with expensive toys that require a German engineer to fix. You win it with high-mobility, low-maintenance units that can stay in the field longer than the enemy.
The Nigerian Army is currently attempting to fight a 21st-century asymmetric war with a 20th-century conventional mindset. They are trying to use "Shock and Awe" against an enemy that is comfortable with "Slow and Constant."
The Cost of the "Super Camp" Strategy
A few years ago, the military moved to a "Super Camp" strategy—withdrawing from smaller outposts to concentrate force in massive, well-defended hubs.
On paper, this reduces casualties. In practice, it ceded the entire countryside to the enemy.
By retreating into Super Camps, the military effectively told the rural population: "You're on your own." It gave the militants the space to train, recruit, and move. Now, when the military does leave these camps to patrol, they are moving through territory that the enemy has had months to map and mine.
Every "victory" claimed by the military after a base attack is usually a "repelling" action. Repelling is not winning. Repelling is surviving. If your metric for success is "we didn't lose the base today," you have already lost the war.
The Ghost Soldier Economy
We cannot talk about these attacks without addressing the internal rot. The "Ghost Soldier" phenomenon—where commanders pocket the salaries of soldiers who only exist on paper—means that when a base is "overrun," it was often understrength from the start.
When a base meant to be held by 200 men is actually being held by 60 because the rest are "on leave" (reading: their pay is being diverted), a militant force of 100 can easily overwhelm it. The blood of the General is often on the hands of the auditors and the payroll officers.
This isn't just a "corruption" issue; it’s a tactical vulnerability. The insurgents know exactly which bases are understrength. They have better HR data on the Nigerian Army than the Ministry of Defense does.
A New Doctrine of Brutal Mobility
If we want to stop writing obituaries for generals, the entire doctrine must be torched.
First: Stop holding ground. Ground in the Sahel is worthless unless it is populated by people who trust you. The military needs to shift from a "Base and Patrol" model to a "Long-Range Reconnaissance" model. Units should be living in the bush, moving constantly, and behaving more like the insurgents they are hunting.
Second: Decapitate the leadership culture. Stop sending generals to the front for photo ops. Empower the Lieutenants and Captains. Give them the autonomy to make decisions without waiting for a radio signal from a headquarters 200 kilometers away.
Third: Truth in reporting. Stop calling every defeat a "strategic withdrawal." When a base is looted and burned, call it what it is: a failure of command. The public—and the soldiers—deserve the dignity of the truth.
The current path is a slow-motion suicide. We are trading our best men for the "privilege" of sitting in the sand and waiting to die. The militants aren't getting stronger; the state is simply refusing to get smarter.
Stop mourning the fallen and start questioning the living who sent them there with a broken map and an empty magazine.
The war in the Northeast won't end when we kill the last insurgent. It will end when we fix the first general.
