TheCable

In the past, you read stories and watched videos of how Nigerian soldiers fled from Boko Haram. Not anymore.

On April 30 — and as has been happening since the final months of President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure — it was the turn of Boko Haram to flee from the army. Sixteen of them fell to soldiers’ bullets in the raid, which happened in Kala Balge, the easternmost local government area of Borno, very close to Cameroon.

No Nigerian soldier died in the operation but six suffered gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, 16 insurgents were killed while two managed to escape, after the soldiers ran out of ammo.

“I will fight for this leg,” said a soldier who participated in the operation before adding in pidgin: “This injury wey I carry, I suppose die that day. Na God just say my time never reach.”

The soldiers, 15 in all, were on patrol when residents of the area alerted them that Boko Haram members were intimidating them and attempting to conscript their sons to their force.

“We had already captured the place. The villagers were crying; we tried to find out what was wrong. They said Boko Haram was operating in that village; they were trying to deceive the villagers, to recruit their boys so that they could come back to attack us,” the soldier said.

“We were on patrol when we ran into Boko Haram; we faced them. There were 18 of them. They came in six motorcycles, three of them mounting each. We, the soldiers, were 15, including the drivers.

“We did not know they were fully prepared that day. But as we were running after them, we were killing them; we were finishing them. They carried mortar RPG [Rocket-Propelled Grenade], GPMG  [General-Purpose Machine Gun]. This went on for almost three hours… Our guns were not working. We fired and fired; our ammo con dey finish. Dem sef go know say soldiers no fear them. They were waiting for us to run but we didn’t.”

At the time the soldiers ran out of ammo, there were only two insurgents standing, and they were fleeing.

“The two that were left thought that they could escape, but we chased them. They were firing at us but we were still chasing,” he continued.

“We exchanged fire, and as they were running away, our vans were pursuing them. When it was too much for them, they abandoned their bike and started running on foot.

“It is only people who have encountered Boko Haram that will not know our difficult they are in battle, but we pursued them till our ammunition was exhausted. We were just standing there, looking at them helplessly.

“They ran to the next village but we could not do anything, but they were still firing. Our support weapons were not working; only you and your Kala [Ak-47]. Still, we killed all of them, save two.

“If we still had ammunition, we would have chased till evening. When our ammo finished, we were looking at them and they were looking at us.

“As their firing became too much for us, our boss told us to go turn around. We were about boarding the truck when three of us were fired at the same time with a GPMG. They were in a building, so it was like they were watching us and knew that we were about moving. I regretted entering the truck, I wished we had not left there, the bullets would not have hit us.”

Although the army continues to underestimate its casualties, TheCable’s multiple encounters with soldiers fighting on the battlefield show that the military is indeed winning the war, as insurgents have been suffering massive death and injury tolls in their recent confrontations with soldiers.