Home OPINION COMMENTARY Shekau And Buratai’s Marching Order, By Yakubu Musa

Shekau And Buratai’s Marching Order, By Yakubu Musa

That Abubakar Shekau, the kingpin of Boko Haram terror group is the Gabbar Singh of our time – a wanted man, jina aur marna (dead or alive) – is something we all know.
But what is new is the marching order given to the army by their chief, General Yusuf Buratai to capture the villain in 40 days’ time. This is a target that can be put on the scale of SMART Objectives and the outcome comfortably predicted.
A noble goal like this should be specific, and this certainly ticks the box in this respect. And of course, it’s very measurable, as all that the army need to do is to parade a living Shekau or his body to the public and not his look alike or a duplicate.
One of the costly strategic communication blunders of the army in the past was the insistence that Shekau was killed and therefore the country was merely dealing with his duplicate (s). Some of us were never convinced. And Shekau succeeded in convincing the army itself that he was not only alive but freely indulging in organizing his crimes.
Is the marching order achievable? Yes, surely.
The army boss should not be this confident without having a reliable ‘intel’ at his disposal. My assumption is that the wanted man is within the reach of Burutai’s men. Yet this is purely my assumption as we have some 39 days to find out.
Is this realistic? Yes.
Shekau is no doubt a very slippery fellow. His elusiveness has helped him to evade captures and assassination attempts in the past. But so was Bin Laden and other terror leaders before him. What we have now is more pressure piled on Burutai’s men to pull a rabbit out of hat, or more literarily to pull Shekau out of Sambisa.
And lastly, the  40 days’ timeline says everything about the time. We have early September to review the whole SMARTness of the marching orders and see if it was ever a smart decision by Burutai.
Right now, my fingers are not only crossed but up in prayers, seeking Allah’s help for those assigned with this tall order to succeed.
Of course, killing Shekau is not the end of the gang as the camp of Abu Musab Albarnawi, the youthful son of late spiritual leader of the group, Muhammed Yusuf, is said to have more followers than Shekau’s camp, but it will be a huge morale booster for the army in this protracted war.[myad]