Scottish Catholic Observer

A Nigerian bishop has called on the West to send in military forces to defeat Boko Haram.

Describing how a strategically superior Boko Haram was now recruiting from countries across north Africa, Bishop Oliver Dashe Doeme of Maiduguri (above) said that Western military intervention was the only viable option in the fight against the militants, now allied to Islamic State.

In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, the bishop said Nigeria’s military was weakened by incompetence, corruption and Boko Haram infiltration within its ranks. He warned that drastic action was urgently needed as the attacks earlier this month in strategically significant Baga showed that Boko Haram was poised to become a threat well beyond Nigeria’s borders and was recruiting from Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Libya.

“The West should bring in security— land forces to contain and beat back Boko Haram,” Bishop Dashe Doeme, whose diocese is the heartland of the Islamist terror group, said: “A concerted military campaign is needed by the West to crush Boko Haram.”

He added the situation had become so critical—with more devastating Boko Haram attacks last week south of Maiduguri—it demanded a repeat of the French campaign of early 2013 to force Islamists out of parts of Mali, also in west Africa. The bishop said the attack in Baga revealed the ineptitude of the Nigerian military, adding that incompetent senior officers should be sacked ‘as a lesson to the others’.

“Among the soldiers, there were sympathisers with Boko Haram – some of them were even Boko Haram members and many of them just ran away,” he said, before calling for the arrest of clandestine foreign backers of the Islamist terror group.

“The [Nigerian] government knows who are sponsoring Boko Haram,” he added.

The bishop described how within five years the Boko Haram threat has decimated his diocese with more than 50 churches and chapels destroyed and more than 200 churches abandoned. He said that 1000 of his faithful have been killed, many of them by Islamists.

“The [extremists] point a gun or a knife at them saying that if they do not convert they will be killed,” he said. “Some of them have been killed for refusing to convert.”

Describing how since 2009, nearly 70,000 of the 125,000 Catholics in Maiduguri had fled their homes, he appealed for help for faithful taking refuge in displacement camps.

He thanked also Aid to the Church in Need for providing 34,500 in emergency aid for displaced people from his diocese.

He also called for prayer to overcome the Boko Haram threat, asking for people to pray the Hail Mary.

“The most important thing is to pray for our people; I know people are praying for us and I am very grateful,” he said. “I want people to pray the Hail Mary – our mother Mary has been championing our cause. We have a lot of devotion to the Blessed Virgin.”

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