Compound tragedy at Tudun Biri

VIEW FROM THE GALLERY By MAHMUD JEGA

To become very well known for the wrong reasons. I lived in Kaduna for 16 years and Igabi Local Government, where it is located, is mostly Kaduna city’s sprawling suburbs but I never heard the name of Tudun Biri village, until last week. Now, nearly everyone in Nigeria has heard the village’s name, no thanks to the Army’s botched “anti-terrorist operation” when an unmanned drone fired rockets at the townsfolk on Sunday night, December 3.

Some 120 people were killed in the attack and another 60 were badly injured and are hospitalized in Kaduna. Add to the tragedy the fact that many, if not majority, of the victims were  women and children, hardly the usual terrorist suspects. Multiply the tragedy by the fact that the victims were participating in a religious festival, Eid el-Maulud, marking the birthday of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Compound the tragedy by the fact that not one but two rocket strikes happened that night. After the first strike hit, villagers who rushed to the victims’ aid were hit by a second strike which, according to witness accounts, took more lives than the first strike.

Complicate the tragedy by the senselessness of the second strike. During the Second Gulf War of 2003 when US troops invaded Iraq, I remember reading a story that warned locals that when an American plane is shot down by anti-aircraft fire, don’t hurry to go near it, because strikes will follow to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. Since the Tudun Biri villagers did not shoot down the first drone [they couldn’t have, armed as they were only with prayer beads and water kettles], the necessity of the second, more devastating strike was hard to see.

Doubly magnify the  tragedy by the communication mishaps that followed. Kaduna State Government was the first to make the story public, working very hard to put its finger on it before the social media takes charge and creates irreparable damage. The Army then acknowledged that it was its [botched] operation. I, for one, was hearing for the first time that Nigerian Army has an air wing with armed drones. All  previous aerial anti-terrorist strikes in the Northeast and Northwest as well as in the Niger Delta that I read about were always attributed to “the Air component” of Operation Hadin Kai, Hadarin Daji, Delta Safe etc. which is the Airforce.

May be the Army must have an air wing but the first question to ask is, why does it need it, since Nigeria Airforce has no ground forces, has existed since 1964, with the same mission, with better equipment for aerial warfare, a lot more men and bases and much more experience? Besides, given the well-known inter-service rivalry in our armed forces and security services, how can we be sure that conflicts will not occur in the air between Army and Airforce?

Ok, before the Army got into the aerial action, the Airforce too, had bungled several operations and hit innocent civilians instead of terrorists. Just as in ground warfare, what the military calls “collateral damage” is inevitable in air strikes and civilians could get killed in the crossfire, but these should be on a very small scale and totally inevitable. The first Army statement said the drone that hit Tudun Biri was after terrorist targets who ran into a community and immersed themselves in it. The question is, was that clear to the commander before he released the drone’s firepower? It is not for nothing, all over the world, that guerilla fighters and terrorists take hostages as “human shields.” It is assumed that a professional military force will not open fire where innocents are in harm’s way. It must either wait for another opportunity, or try to persuade the terrorists to free the hostages.

Many years ago, I heard a former Chief Judge of old Sokoto State saying that, in matters of capital punishment, a judge will rather free ten guilty persons than convict one innocent person. In other words, the evidence has to be beyond reasonable doubt, before a judge convicts. Those of us who sat for weeks on end in 1995 watching the O. J. Simpson trial on live telly always remember his lead counsel Johnnie Cochran’s devastating final pitch to the jury: “The glove does not fit, so you must acquit!” And acquit the jury did. One juror explained as they emerged from sequestration that “the glove did not fit” was enough reason to acquit.

Does the military operate by the same principle, that if there is any iota of doubt, withhold fire? Just like capital punishment, lives are at stake here. And what is the corroborating evidence? In journalism, our rule is that an exclusive story obtained from a source must be corroborated by another, independent source before it is fit for publication. Now, journalism is much less deadly [sometimes] than judicial ruling or military action, so information about suspected terrorist movements supplied by a drone, however cutting-edge the tech it has, must be corroborated by another source before action is taken.

For example, Nigeria Airforce statements about aerial operations against terrorist targets in the Northeast carefully state that action was carried out after reconnaissance confirmed the authenticity of the terrorist targets. Still the Airforce made mistakes, the worst being at Rann in 2017 when its planes dropped bombs on an IDP camp, in the full view of humanitarian aid workers, and killed an estimated 50 people. More recently there was the episode in Doma area of Nasarawa State, where Fulani leaders waiting to load their cattle onto trucks were attacked by air force jets and scores were killed. I believe however that it was the checks and double checks, using both human and tech assets, in the years since terrorism exploded in this country that these mistakes were minimised. Until the Army joined in the aerial action.

However, the Army, Defence Headquarters, Kaduna State and Federal Governments all rose to the occasion and have expressed deep sorrow and compassion over what happened at Tudun Biri. Army Chief Lt General Taoheed Lagbaja attended the funeral prayers for the victims and offered profuse apologies, as did the Ministers of Defense. Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani has been there many times; senators donated their December pay to the victims, and Sultan of Sokoto Muhammad Sa’ad cried out for justice. Vice President Kashim Shettima personally went to Tudun Biri, prayed at the mass grave sites and was seen kneeling down by hospital beds to console injured victims.

Chief of Defence Staff General Chris Musa, himself a native of Kaduna State, assured us that it will not happen again. We hope it doesn’t, but before that there is the small matter of the probe and punishment of culprits that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Bola Tinubu promised. Some people said, perhaps correctly, that the military could not be trusted to investigate itself. I however disagree with them that this probe, whether judicial or administrative, must be public. Holding an open inquiry, either at the National Assembly or by a Judicial Commission, would enhance transparency but it could also expose military and intelligence secrets to the country’s internal and external enemies.

In all previous cases of this nature, it was never made public if the military punished anyone who was responsible for the tragic mistake. Was it the intelligence assets that could not differentiate between women, children and terrorists, in which case we should punish the persons who purchased it? Was someone supposed to corroborate the information about terrorists’ movements but did not do so, in which case we must punish him or her? Did someone give the order to fire when he knew the pursued terrorists ran into a crowd of civilians, in which case the person should be super charged?

Or even, who really is responsible for giving the final order to open fire? We remember that when American special forces undertook the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011, President Barack Obama sat all night in the Situation Room and monitored the mission. He could have stopped it at any stage if he suspected that large civilian casualties could be inflicted on the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. There are other reasons why civilian bosses must closely monitor such operations. Army Generals cannot always be trusted not to overdo things. During the Cuban missile crisis of 1961, US President John F. Kennedy’s political adviser Kenneth O’Donnell warned him after a security council meeting that some of his service chiefs, notably Airforce Chief General Curtis LeMay, could shoot at Soviet warships that tried to breach the embargo around Cuba and precipitate a nuclear war. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara then phoned warship commanders enforcing the blockade and said under no circumstances should they open fire without his permission.

In our own situation, where the military is pursuing terrorists, separatists and oil thieves all over the place, I don’t expect the President, Defence Minister or the service chiefs to sit down all day and retain the power to authorize strikes. However, they must put in charge very experienced Generals who should check and double check before they open fire at any target.

Which brings me to the last issue. It was the Kaduna-based cleric Sheikh Ahmed Gummi who first alleged that the shooting of Maulud celebrants was not an accident. He was shortly followed by the equally incendiary Sokoto-based cleric Bello Yabo, who asked why such incidents happen only in the North. Gummi once told assembled bandits that the Army was killing them because they are Muslims. As a former soldier himself, he must know that every military unit in Nigeria is thoroughly mixed up regionally, ethnically and religiously and cannot possibly pursue an ethnic cleansing agenda. A tragic mistake was made at Tudun Biri, but it was most certainly a mistake. Compensate the victims and their families, as the Sultan of Sokoto demanded but on top of all, ensure that it does not happen again.