March 15, (THEWILL) — Four military bases came under coordinated assault in Nigeria’s north-east on the night of March 5. Fighters aligned with the Islamic State West Africa Province and Boko Haram struck positions in Konduga, Mainok, Jakana and Marte simultaneously, killing soldiers, burning vehicles and seizing weapons and ammunition before withdrawing into the surrounding bush. Among the dead was Lieutenant Colonel SI Iliyasu, who commanded the 222 Battalion at Konduga. Three days later, on 9 March, a further attack on the base at Kukawa claimed the life of Lieutenant Colonel Umar Farouq, who died from wounds sustained in the fighting while being transported towards Maiduguri for treatment. The Goniri base in Yobe State was raided in the same period. Sources familiar with the situation, according to media reports, put the total number of soldiers killed across these incidents above 100.
The attacks were notable, not only for their human costs, but also for the manner in which they unfolded. Insurgents moved from multiple directions, breached defensive perimeters at more than one site almost simultaneously and departed with looted equipment before reinforcements could arrive. Video footage released by ISWAP confirmed the breaches and the extent of the damage inflicted. That armed groups capable of such coordination have now done so repeatedly raises questions that go well beyond operational detail. A professional army operating in terrain it has patrolled for more than a decade should not be losing forward operating bases to fighters who lack formal institutional training, heavy armour or the logistical depth of a national force.
Observers of Nigeria’s political history will note a further dimension that rarely features in official security briefings. Attacks of this kind tend to multiply as the general conversation shifts towards election cycles and political campaigns grow imminent. The north-east has historically become more dangerous at such moments, when the attention of those at the centre of power turns elsewhere and the pressure to sustain counter-insurgency operations diminishes. Whether the current wave fits that pattern remains to be established, but the timing has not gone unremarked.
To understand the vulnerability exposed by these raids, it is necessary to look beyond the immediate tactical picture. The institutional conditions that placed those soldiers in weakened positions did not appear overnight. During the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, approximately two billion US dollars intended for arms procurement, including helicopters, fighter jets and ammunition, was found by subsequent investigations to have been diverted into private accounts. Contracts were issued and money disbursed; the equipment never reached the troops. Part of those funds reportedly supported political activity of the time. That scandal set a precedent which later governments have not fully reversed. Defence budgets continue to run into trillions of naira annually, yet a substantial portion is consumed by salaries and the overheads rather than equipment, maintenance or operational readiness. The soldier deployed in a remote corner of Borno or Yobe State depends on supply chains whose integrity is determined far from the battlefield, at levels of command and government where the consequences of mismanagement are felt last and felt hardest by others.
That gap between paper strength and operational reality is precisely what insurgents exploit. Their ability to coordinate attacks across multiple locations suggests access to information and a degree of tactical agility that contrasts sharply with the picture of institutional dysfunction described by frontline accounts. Reports from serving personnel describe units that are poorly supplied, sometimes underpaid and reliant on equipment that has not been properly maintained. The professional standard of the force reflects not only the difficulty of the terrain or the cunning of the enemy but the cumulative effect of a procurement culture in which personal benefit has consistently taken precedence over operational need. Where promotions and contracts are shaped by connection rather than merit, the effectiveness of an institution declines in ways that eventually reveal themselves in combat.
The problem extends well beyond the security sector. Hospital facilities fall short because funds earmarked for equipment are mostly diverted before they arrive. Schools operate in inadequate conditions for the same structural reason. Infrastructure programmes absorb large allocations while roads remain unfinished and public services deteriorate. Nigeria ranks persistently near the bottom of international indices measuring perceived public sector integrity, and that low standing is not merely a reputational abstraction. It describes the daily operating environment for every institution attempting to function within the same administrative system that governs defence procurement. The soldier with a jammed rifle and the teacher in a crumbling classroom share the same story of a state that has been systematically plundered from within.
The political dimension of the crisis has grown increasingly visible in public debate. National leaders have addressed the insecurity in the north-east with insufficient urgency, and that policy choices are too often shaped by calculations of political survival rather than operational necessity. A democratic government carries a constitutional duty to protect its citizens, and repeated failures to hold territory, combined with the loss of senior officers at positions that should embody the state’s capacity to project force, are difficult to describe as anything other than a deepening failure of that duty.
None of this diminishes the courage of the rank and file. Soldiers in Borno and Yobe confront genuine danger in difficult conditions and many have paid with their lives for shortcomings that originate nowhere near the front. The deaths of officers such as Lieutenant Colonels Iliyasu and Farouq are not only personal tragedies. They illuminate the distance between the resources that a state of Nigeria’s size and revenue ought to command and the reality faced by those who carry out its security functions on the ground.
Purchasing more weapons or enlisting more soldiers will not resolve a crisis whose roots lie in how public office is understood and exercised. If the procurement chain remains compromised, new tactical equipment and training will not reach the units that need it. If the culture of self-enrichment continues to govern decisions at senior levels, the gap between official capability and operational performance will widen further. What the attacks of early March have made plain, with unusual clarity, is that the insurgency in the north-east carries within it a story about the state of the Nigerian state itself. The insurgents may have overrun the wire, but the conditions that made those positions vulnerable were constructed over many years and at many levels of government. That is the harder reckoning which the country now faces, and deferring it will cost more lives.
