This is a short story on how the Boko Haram sect is using our own money to fund its own sectarian war against us. How is that possible? Simple. It's about bargaining power.
Negotiating from a position of strength is the hallmark of American foreign policy. They beat you to pulp strategically and diplomatically. They imposed tight economic sanctions against you. They embargoed your goods and services in the global market.
And at their prompting, you suffered military blockage at all fronts. Your friends will become the enemies of Uncle Sam. Consequently, these old friends will turn against you in no distance time in order to be in the good book of Uncle Sam. And at that point, you are on your own - battered and bruised economically and diplomatically.
Confronted with a clear and present danger of internal unrest and imminent break down of law and order due to domestic economic hardship, you're forced to the negotiation table with Uncle Sam, without conditions.
At that point, your bargaining power is drastically truncated - you're now willing and ready to oblige Uncle Sam in whatever demands they placed on the table. With only one exception: Cuba under Fidel Castro. And that's by the way.
The Boko Haram sect, operating in the North-Eastern axis of Nigeria, is taking a page from the American Foreign Policy PlayBook. The more of our girls they kidnapped and the more of our military personnel they wasted and weapons seized, the more willing Abuja remains to suspend our sovereign status to appease and placate the sect, and much more, parting with a huge sum of our money already converted into the U.S. Dollars in their behalf. Now, they are in a stronger position financially. I will come to this point later.
In addition, and as part of the bargain, some of the captured sect adherents serving time in prison are released unconditionally. And if you must know some of these ex-convicts who are unrepentant enemies of the State have been recruited into Nigerian Armed Forces. And that has created insurmountable vulnerabilities within the rank and file of our Armed Forces. Loyalty, though it matters most in the military, is now in the air.
That's not all.
So, whenever the sect is experiencing shortages in volunteer forces and a shortfall in its financial resources, it will engineer massive guerilla attacks against the military in their own soil.
And most often, the Military is beaten into a pulp as if they had never undertaken any military training. Now you begin to fathom the impacts of the enemies within - the massive vulnerabilities I alluded to earlier.
On the alternative, if the sect members do not want to go military way, they go about scheming daring kidnapping exploits, targeting vulnerable girls.
So, after every successful attack on our military base or after a successful kidnapping of defenseless girls, influential and not so influential Nigerians will start making calls or writing opinions suggesting negotiations with the sect. The administration, true to type, will not tell Nigerians what its plans are.
Unknown to you, your hard-earned dollars and pounds are already disappearing to unknown intermediaries - bogus or authentic - to secure the release of the girls or simply for appeasement of the sect. After a successful transfer, reinforcement is assured until another attack or kidnapping.
And that, Nigerians, is how the Boko Haram sect has outplayed the Buhari Administration in negotiations and military engagements. The ball is in the President's Court. He knows what to do.
Alex Aidaghese
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