Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria

The Military and Operations against Boko Haram, 2011-2017

Akali Omeni

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367890896
• eBook ISBN: 9781351597630
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This book offers a detailed examination of the counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Nigerian military against Boko Haram between 2011 and 2017.

Based on extensive fieldwork conducted with military units in Nigeria, Counter-Insurgency in Nigeria has two main aims. First, it seeks to provide an understanding of the Nigerian military's internal role – a role that today, as a result of internal threats, pivots towards counter-insurgency. The book illustrates how organizational culture, historical experience, institutions, and doctrine, are critical to understanding the Nigerian military and its attitudes and actions against the threat of civil disobedience, today and in the past. The second aim of the book is to examine the Nigerian military campaign against Boko Haram insurgents – specifically, plans and operations between June 2011 and April 2017. Within this second theme, emphasis is placed on the idea of battlefield innovation and the reorganization within the Nigerian military since 2013, as the Nigerian Army and Air Force recalibrated themselves for COIN warfare. A certain mystique has surrounded the technicalities of COIN operations by the Army against Boko Haram, and this book aims to disperse that veil of secrecy. Furthermore, the work's analysis of the air force's role in counter-insurgency is unprecedented within the literature on military warfare in Nigeria.

This book will be of great interest to students of military studies, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, African politics and security studies in general.

Part I

Counter-insurgency and the Nigerian military institution

1	Organizational culture and historical experience of the military in Nigeria

Introduction

The actions of an organization can seldom be separated from its culture and past experience. This is especially true in warfare, where it is not uncommon for militaries to be stuck in ‘fighting the last war’ – doing the things tried in previous campaigns all over again, either because they worked last time around, or because this is what the organization is used to. Whether it is the stickiness of an ideology of the offensive, the insistence of a particular doctrine over all else, or the use of a particular combat arm – the infantry, for instance – as the solution to most problems, it is not uncommon for culture and historical experience to override operational requirements in the traditional military organization. Consequently, in examining present wartime challenges and a failure to adjust on the battlefield, a sociology of the military institution itself holds both heuristic value and some explanatory power.

In this chapter, I argue that the Nigerian military’s internal function, which today pivots sharply towards counter-insurgency, has been influenced by organizational culture and historical experience. Both of these, over decades, have shaped the military’s perspective of its institution and internal role. It would be misleading to say that the post-colonial antecedents of the modern Nigerian military are entirely responsible for its counter-insurgency culture today, or the lack thereof. Rather, what I hope to show is that culture and historical experience stifled the necessary attitudinal shifts of the military towards the threat of internal unrest and violent civil disobedience.

Also, I interrogate why, post independence, the Nigerian military copied so much from its British principal, and adapted so little for its new internal role, despite what was a new chapter for the military as a professionalized defence force of a now independent state. Since the origins of the British-operated Nigerian Army were effectively as a local constabulary, its role was mostly an internal one and the attitude to the Nigerian citizen was coercive. Both these facts worked for a range of reasons discussed in the chapter. But with the ‘Nigerianized’ post-colonial Army answerable to Lagos and having a divested interest from Whitehall, much of these pre-existing attitudes and doctrines relevant to the Army’s internal role engendered negative pathologies that influenced the Army’s behaviour in the decades that followed.

To achieve its objectives, the chapter is laid out as follows. First, it demonstrates the coercive-leaning ideology of the Nigerian military’s internal function, since the post-colonial period. Second, it evaluates, using a historical and sociological analysis, how the preferred kinetic force model has been reinforced and where within the military’s transitioning this model originates. Third, the chapter uses, for case study instrumentality, the Niger Delta experience as an argument for why this force model has not served the Nigerian military as well recently as in the past. Finally, the chapter employs organizational theory to evaluate why the military has perpetuated its adopted model in its internal function so doggedly over the decades, mixed or altogether poor results notwithstanding.

Central to the analysis is the notion that institutional isomorphism, as a vehicle of change and institutional transfer between the British colonialist military and the Nigerian military that emerged post independence, helps explain why the Nigerian military, in being so closely modelled after its colonialist principal, failed to adjust to its role as an instrument of democratic power answerable to the Nigerian government, rather than to the British Crown.

‘Isomorphism’, as defined by Amos Hawley, is ‘a constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other units that face the same set of environmental conditions’ (1968, p. 328). Applying this concept to organizational theory, DiMaggio and Powell contend that their theory extends ‘from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions’ and argue that ‘once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar [even] as they try to change them’ (1983, p. 147). DiMaggio and Powell’s theory of institutional isomorphism is important to understand the transfer processes between the British and the Nigerian military. The nature and outcome of these transfer processes, I argue, shaped the military’s perception of its role as an internal organ of the state. However, as the section that follow suggests, other factors within Nigeria’s historical experience also influenced the military’s internal role in the decades following independence.

Offensive ideology, infantry-centricity and military culture in Nigeria

The civil war of Nigeria, fought from 1967 to 1970, brought a decisive victory for federal forces against Biafra separatists from the eastern part of the country. The federal forces of Nigeria, in being able to attrit the rebels over a three-year period, fought, and won that war with conventional forces and with limited need to develop COIN capabilities. The victory, however, and its highly conventional and decisive nature, would have implications for the military’s internal function and its perception of how best to deal with internal threats.

Brigadier General Alabi-Isama writes of the ‘tragedy of victory’ and of the ironic consequences of the Army’s victory in the civil war, on institutional reform (Alabi-Isama, 2013). Rather than reform, over the decades, the military became as politically entrenched within the polity as to practically guarantee a lowering of its legitimacy. Nowa Omoigui (2006) likewise writes of the reticence of the military regarding the area of actual organizational and inter-service reform. The Army’s organization and divisional structure, despite a shift in the threat terrain, would remain virtually unchanged, save for the designation of the Lagos garrison as an additional manoeuvre division in 2000. The promise of irregular warfare development at the Nigerian Army School of Infantry (NASI) would stall, for decades, according to Colonel J. G. Villo, in an interview with the author in 2012, and with it any hopes that counter-insurgency would take any other direction than the existing highly kinetic model.

Ironically, therefore, the decisive nature of the Nigerian military’s victory was detrimental to the professionalization of the Army, as an internal actor, in three ways. First, in the Army’s exaggeration of its internal political influence in the years, and indeed decades, following the civil war. Second, in encouraging institutional inertia against reform to the military’s offensive thinking, doctrine and action set: force had worked against Biafra separatists who were so heavily militarized, why would it not work against any other internal threats? Third, the conventional nature of the civil war of Nigeria retarded the development of counter-insurgency. Rather, conventional capabilities acquisition, and an offensive doctrine, were reinforced in the Army’s organizational and acquisitions strategy, in the post-civil war decades.

As evidenced in its involvement in internal security (IS) operations¹ since the civil war of Nigeria, the Nigerian military’s post-war action set suggested that offensive ideology, and the pre-eminence of the infantry, insofar as both had proved instrumental to winning the war, should constitute the Army’s underpinning approach – its doctrine – going forward. Whereas Chapter 3 will discuss Nigerian military offensive doctrine in detail, two features of this ideology are worth highlighting here. The first is that force, when employed in the engagement, should be done so overwhelmingly. Put another way, fighting power, for the Nigerian military, was not just important to unhinging the enemy’s centre of gravity (CoG), it was critical. The second feature was attendant on the first: the combat arms and combat support arms, rather than the non-combat function, were seen as instrumental to successful military operations. The infantry, in particular, would constitute the dominant combat arm. Indeed, even when a manoeuvrist doctrine was later adopted, this second feature in particular would endure.

Insofar as an offensive ideology may be justifiable in the conventional engagement of a major war, how effective, Kilcullen (2010) asks, is this approach, in counter-insurgency? It should, of course, be considered that, unlike a major war, insurgencies on paper at least are orders of magnitude smaller, are lower in intensity, are as embedded within the civilian populace as to make the ‘theatre’ ambiguous, and do not have an enemy’s most powerful corps or armoured formation, for instance, as the centre of gravity. Moreover, as General Sir Rupert Smith (2006) suggests, the dilemma of successful use of kinetic force is such that it may engender parochialist pathologies that stifle the learning and non-combat-oriented flexibility required for more diffuse threat forms, such as insurgency. Such ‘parochialism’, sometimes identifiable in the aftermath of an ideologically offensive approach that has worked in past engagements, therefore is not unique to the Nigerian military. Rather, it can be identified within the histories of militaries as change-averse institutions (Snyder, 1984).

Commenting on Germany’s offensive doctrine during the Great War, for instance, Snyder observes, ‘the extraordinary prestige of the German army rested on its historical ability to deliver rapid offensive victories …’ (ibid., pp. 15–40). The Germany Army, Snyder observes, ‘could not accept … an inglorious, unproductive stalemate’ (ibid., p. 17). Snyder’s theory casts a shadow on the Nigerian experience. This is insofar as the decisive outcome of the civil war of Nigeria, in favour of federal forces, may have reinforced the military’s belief, in the decades following the civil war, in the utility of military superiority and an offensive action set. Indeed, that the civil war stretched into four calendar years may have been underpinned by the Army’s tendency to underestimate the enemy’s capabilities (Atofarati, 1992; Omoigui, n.d.). Army Headquarters (AHQ), for instance, in a gross overestimate of the utility of force, initially were of the view that the civil war would be over, in four phases, within a month (Obasanjo, 1980). The concept of the ‘inglorious stalemate’, as highlighted by Snyder above, therefore would have been inconceivable to the Nigerian Army war planners. who had an exaggerated reliance on offensive doctrine and its utility.² Yet, such a stalemate should be expected in insurgency, as both sides improve over time. Indeed, writers of the US COIN doctrine suggest this scenario, which they refer to as a ‘strategic stalemate’, to be a ‘phase’ of insurgency (US Army and Marine Corps, 2006, pp. 1–7). And in the contemporary Nigeria military experience, the discussion of counter-insurgency operations against Boko Haram in Chapter 4 highlights the period of such a stalemate.

It was not only in the area of doctrine, however, that the Nigerian Army demonstrated offensive ideology. Counter-insurgency, as the Army came to see it, became effectively an infantry affair. This in itself is not problematic per se. Counter-insurgency warfare, particularly prior to the stabilization phase, if one is factored into campaign planning, often entails a combined arms approach that emphasizes infantry elements especially in heavily contested areas (MOD, 2009; US Army, 2014). In Nigeria, this approach to countering insurgency with the Infantry as the main combat arm retains currency even today. Fieldwork with 21 Brigade in Maiduguri, and the first-hand account of the Brigade Commander, Brigadier General Bamigboye, regarding the land component’s concept of operations – its CONOPS – against Boko Haram, indicates this infantry-centric approach may be as true within Nigerian military COIN, as it is in Western doctrine and practice. Alice Hills, for instance, refers to the British approach to COIN in urban areas, as ‘infantry-centric’ (2004, p. 32). Moreover, whereas some elements within the US Marine Corps (USMC) might dispute it, Hills likewise is of the view that the USMC ‘fulfills an essentially light infantry role’ (ibid., p. 32). Within the Nigeria experience, insofar as the Army remains heavily dependent on the infantry within its internal role, it is a culture that goes back decades. As an example, this over-dependence on the infantry by the Army remained the case long after the Army began its post-civil war mechanization process (at which time the problem of an oversized infantry corps was first realized within the Army). As Jimi Peters writes, regarding the post-civil war Army:

[M]echanization became an important issue during the re-organization [after the war] because ‘the Nigerian Army emerged from the civil war in 1970 with an inflated number of infantry battalions’. By 1980, they still accounted for about 40% of the Nigerian Army.

(1997, p. 145)

Apologist commentary on the infantry role in warfare is not new. Widening this catechism to war as a broader military concept, Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic text, On War, is categorical regarding the relative superiority of the infantry function.³ ‘[D]istribution of elementary military strengths among the three main arms demonstrates the superiority and versatility of infantry in comparison with the other two’, Clausewitz notes, ‘it [the infantry] alone combines all three qualities’ (1976, pp. 667–668).⁴ The subtext of Clausewitz’s position, however, is identifiable: insofar as the infantry may be the most indispensable function for a military force, a combined arms approach, all other things being equal, should be viewed by the war planner as more effective than a full-blooded infantry thrust. Clausewitz himself makes this clear, ‘A combination of all three [combat arms] confers the greatest strength’ (ibid., p. 669).

Clausewitz’s writings apply to the engagement more broadly, and especially to the engagement as a pitched affair, as it was in his time; he is not, per se, speaking about the infantry function in irregular warfare. Interpretation within COIN parameters, therefore, should be cautiously undertaken; not least also because an ongoing debate exists, regarding Clausewitz’s relevance in the twenty-first century.⁵ Galula also makes a case for the infantry function, but does so within a context specific to counter-insurgency:

As long as the insurgent has failed to build a powerful regular army, the counter-insurgent has little use for heavy, sophisticated forces designed for conventional warfare. For his ground forces, he needs infantry and more infantry, highly mobile and lightly armed.… The counter-insurgent, therefore, has to proceed to a first transformation of his existing forces along these lines, notably to convert into infantry units as many unneeded specialised units as possible.

(2006, p. 93)

Yet Galula also clarifies why infantry should play such a fundamental role in COIN campaigning:

The adaptation, however, must go deeper than that. At some point in the counter-insurgency process, the static units that took part initially in large-scale military operations in their area will find themselves confronted with a huge variety of non-military tasks which have to be performed in order to get the support of the population, and which can be performed only by military personnel, because of the shortage of reliable civilian political and administrative personnel.… They have to be organised, equipped and supported accordingly.

(2006, p. 93)

The sort of switch Galula intimates, however – from a kinetic action set to a more population-centric one by the infantry in situ – may be simplifying the training, the skill, the time and the temperament required to transition the warfighter to simultaneously...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Counter-insurgency and the Nigerian military institution
• Part II Counter-insurgency plans and operations against Boko Haram
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: curricula of training divisions at the CT-COIN directorate
• Appendix 2: interviews
• Index