Historians especially those who read French history will remember rather vividly the famous writer, Denis Richard known to be the author of the famous phrase, “thinking cap.” In effect, Denis Richard admired the way philosophers who wrote on the French Revolution looked at things, in the same wave length only disagreeing thinly in approach and not in substance, and described them as people who put their heads “under the same thinking cap.” That in essence is the way nations fight against enemies. Irrespective of their differences at national levels, once an enemy appears, they bury their hatchets and face the common enemy. The Islamist sect, Boko Haram is considered a common enemy and is being fought as such. This explains the whole philosophy behind the creation of a Multinational Joint Task Force, a combined formation comprising units, mostly military, from Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.  It is headquartered in N'djamena and is mandated to bring an end to the Boko Haram insurgency.

This force from every indication has been operating in synergy and this explains why the Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bakary in his last press conference vehemently dismissed the allegation by a foreign media organ that Cameroonian soldiers have taken it a “habit to abuse civilian population in Nigerian territory, under the sole pretext of fighting the Boko Haram horde.” Talking in his capacity as government Spokesperson, he recalled that the “military operations conducted in Nigerian within the area described by the media are carried out under the auspices of the first military sector of the Multinational Joint Task Force and supported by the Alpha 1 and Emergence 4 operation forces, always in perfect synergy with the Nigerian military command.” This in effect, entails that that all operations are well coordinated and cannot be solely attributed to the soldiers of one country, talk less of crossing territorial boundaries in order to attack citizens.

To hammer the prowess of the Cameroonian defence forces, Tchiroma said, “Unlike the Boko Haram terrorists, our regular army uses the tactics homologated by international conventions with regard to armed conflicts, and spares no effort to minimize human losses and other collateral damages on civilian populations.” Accusations of this nature in times of war have always illuminated the air and in most cases have always been used as propaganda machines by warring factions. The unfortunate thing about such propaganda is that they usually divert the attention of the people from the real issue at hand.  The real issue in this sense is how to prevent the Boko Haram sect cum terrorist group from achieving their mission of establishing an Islamic State. 

From the argument presented by the Minister of Communication, the accusation remains unfounded and shows signs of manipulation. “We have the right to question the legitimacy and the true motives of our circumstantial prosecutors, who on the basis of mere gossip, probably peddled by Boko Haram’s barely masked henchmen, some civil society activists in the field of human rights, and even some media of proven reputation, choose to shoot their arrows against the very ones that uphold the civilization values and lead a just and legitimate struggle for the triumph of the said values”, he said. That notwithstanding, it is important to state that the whole issue remains the elimination of Boko Haram and bringing peace to the peace loving people of Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad and Niger.