Nigeria’s Defence Minister, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, has delivered a startling revelation on why airstrikes often fall short in the war against bandits, saying many of the terror camps are buried so deep inside forest enclaves that bombs “cannot penetrate.”
In an interview with the BBC Hausa Service, as reported by The Sun, Badaru said the Armed Forces are edging closer to crushing banditry, despite the dramatic resurgence of school abductions rattling the country.
He likened the criminals’ hit-and-run attacks to textbook guerrilla tactics designed to jolt the nation.
“This is how guerrilla warfare works. There will be periods of calm, and then they launch an attack that shakes the nation.
“Yes, we know their locations, but some of these areas are places where direct strikes could endanger civilians, or forests where our bombs cannot penetrate,” Badaru said.
While insisting the military never declared total victory, the minister admitted that the fresh wave of school kidnappings has triggered urgent questions about strategy.
“We never said the problem was completely over. But this renewed kidnapping of schoolchildren worries us. We are studying what went wrong and how to prevent a recurrence,” he added.
