According to Fr. George Ehusani, a priest of the Diocese of Lokoja and executive director of the Lux Terra Leadership Foundation, many of those secretly backing the activities of militants in Nigeria occupy key positions in various sectors of the country.

In a July 22 interview with ACI Africa, Fr. Ehusani said that the sympathizers are thwarting every effort to defeat the militants by either supporting them materially or leaking key information pertaining planned offensives from the country’s military ranks.

“There are people who may not be as radical and as brutal as this Boko Haram or these violent bandits, but who share their sentiments, who share some of their ideological orientations, who sympathize with them; people who believe that Nigeria, or at least most of Nigeria, the Northern part of Nigeria, should be fully Islamic,” Fr. Ehusani says.

He adds, “There are people of that orientation in government. Everybody knows that there are people of that orientation in schools and colleges. There are people of that orientation in the military forces, in the security forces.”

“There are allegations that when plans are made as to how to swoop on these people and end this menace, the plans will leak out from the highest military command,” the priest said, adding, “The plans will leak out to the terrorists.”

Because the sympathizers occupy key positions in government and other influential positions in the public and private sectors, Fr. Ehusani says they are treated “with kid gloves”.

“We can see the lack of action, the inaction and treating these criminals with kid gloves all these years. We can see that some people in high places in government sympathize with these bandits and these criminals, and they will not easily allow, let’s say, the Nigerian air force to go and bomb their enclave,” he says.

The priest asserts that the government has been “more unwilling than unable” to fight the militants who continue to wreak havoc against populations in Nigeria, most of them Christian.

He finds it baffling that the Nigerian military has been able to quell violence in the neighboring countries, only to appear defeated by militants.

“Many of us are at a loss,” Fr. Ehusani said, asking, “How can a country that has trained military, trained army, navy, air force that has done very well in international peacekeeping, one that has done very well in helping to quell the crisis in Sierra Leone, in Liberia… say they cannot quell this Boko Haram problem?”

The priest said that Nigeria played a principal role in bringing to an end the 11-year war in Sierra Leone and in many other countries, including Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Fr. Ehusani says that militants are establishing territory in many places, especially in the north of the country, where many places have their specific flag.

“As we speak, swathes of territories in Northern Nigeria are no go areas except for them; meaning swathes of territories that I as a priest, as a Christian, cannot go into because they have taken over; they have hoisted their flag,” he stated.

He explained that in Borno state, for instance, there are vast territories where citizens are forced to pay taxes to Boko Haram and other bandits so as to be allowed to carry on legitimate activities like going to their farms….

The people have unceasingly reached out to the international community for help, where the government has failed, he said.

“We have also cried to the international community that, even if the government does not ask for help, see the number of people who are dying. Can you imagine that over 1,000 people are being killed every month, and we are not at war?”

He added, “There is no declared war. There is what is called low intensity conflict and high intensity conflict. By the time you have more than a thousand people having been killed every month, it is no longer low intensity. It is a high intensity conflict.”