An unknown Nigerian soldier who has been engaging in battles against Boko Haram has identified corruption as the major factor hindering the fight against insurgency.
In an unprecedented exclusive interview with senior international correspondent of Cable News Network (CNN), Nick Robertson, the soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “Not just the generals, everybody in the country wants to get rich by any means necessary,”
The soldier said the troops never benefit from the billions allocated to the defence budget and that he even had to buy his own uniform.
“The troop morale is actually very low, very low, because we are not issued a uniform; we buy the uniforms ourselves,” he explained.
Another soldier, a veteran of African Union and United Nations peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Sudan, said that the army did not have the equipment needed to successfully fight Boko Haram.
“The major problem the soldiers have is they don’t have the equipment to fight,” a video posted on CNN’s website revealed him as saying.
According to him, the insurgents have anti-aircraft guns, which he says are accurate up to three-quarters of a mile. All the Nigerian military has are AK47 rifles and small machine guns, accurate up to a few hundred metres.
According to him, the Nigerian soldiers are often given only 60 bullets each, so they quickly run out, but Boko Haram, he said, has large supplies of ammunition and more fighters.
Although the Nigerian soldiers do win some fights, he said they are regularly forced to turn tail and run for their lives by the sheer volume of gunfire from Boko Haram fighters.
The soldier also revealed that the Army medics refused to pay the $200 for medicine to treat his injuries.
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