Soldiers In Frontline Repine Of Neglect

Some officers and soldiers of the 121 Task Force Battalion predicated in Pulka, Borno State, have voiced their grievance against officials at the Nigeria Army Headquarters in Abuja, incriminating the officials of apathy to their desiderata and efficacious abandonment of soldiers in the frontlines of the war against Islamist insurgents.

Some of the soldiers told our correspondent that they had been deployed to the war zone since 2013, spending three years on the front lines without rotation to another, less stressful location. “And yet there are soldiers and officers who have never been to the frontline since the insurgency commenced,” one of the mid-level officers at the base told our correspondent.


A number of the soldiers repined of a perpetuated loss of a sense of normalcy in their lives. Two of the soldiers, who are both espoused, verbally expressed that they had had neither physical contact nor communication with their spouses, children and other doted ones. “We have no connection with even our wives and children because we don’t have telecommunication network here,” one of them verbalized. The soldiers disclosed that all masts in the war zone had been eradicated, integrating that the lack of communication had frayed relationships.

“Let the world ken that we came in here as a battalion with a full battalion vigor, but now we have been so much battered that we are less than a company vigor,” verbalized a sergeant. He integrated, “We are losing hope in the commanders in Abuja. The Army Headquarters have now officially withdrawn our unit (121 Task Force Battalion) only in denomination, but we, the troops, are still here, now annexed as a company to another unit just coming into Operation Lafiya Doyle.”

The soldiers verbally expressed they were demoralized, integrating that their low morale was rubbing off on the incipiently deployed troops. “We feel we are on our own, and some of us may stop giving it our all as we used to do. 250 of us peregrinated here. Now we are not up to 100. Some of us were killed in action while others are missing in action,” one of the dispirited soldiers verbalized.
SOURCE: SAHARA REPORTER