Is Nigeria’s Army Failing?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2015
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most of the nearly 300 girls kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria last year are still missing. Their plight temporarily brought global focus to a hideous insurgency that seems to produce new horrors every day.
More than 17,000 people have died and a million have been displaced in the Nigerian army’s six-year fight with Boko Haram. The army has been rocked by mutinies – including in the division created to fight the militants - and soldiers in other parts of the country have been dismissed for refusing orders to fight in the north. Meanwhile, human rights groups say the army can be nearly as brutal to civilians as the militants are. And in a sign of apparent growing impatience, Nigeria's neighbours have begun sending their own armies against Boko Haram. So this week we ask, Is the Nigerian Army Failing?
(Photo: Some of the 59 Nigerian soldiers facing trial on charges of mutiny and conspiracy to commit mutiny over claims that they refused to fight Boko Haram militants sit handcuffed on October 15, 2014 in the military courtroom in Abuja. The soldiers, all members of the 111th Special Forces Battalion, all pleaded not guilty in court. They are also accused of refusing to deploy in August to recapture the towns of Yelwa, Bellabulini and Dambo in Borno state from Boko Haram, according to the charge sheet. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:40.9 | My name's Linda Davies and I commissioned |
| 0:43.0 | podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:45.0 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality, |
| 0:49.0 | featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:54.4 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 1:00.9 | poltergeist, cricket and conspiracy theories, Cricket, and Conspiracy Theories. |
| 1:04.4 | And that's just a few examples. |
| 1:06.3 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, |
| 1:09.4 | find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. Hi, thanks for downloading the inquiry from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:17.0 | We're a weekly program. |
| 1:18.0 | Our job is to add in-depth analysis to one question from the news. We hope you like it. |
| 1:26.4 | BBC World Service, this is Helena Merriman with the inquiry. |
| 1:31.9 | This week is the Nigerian army failing. |
| 1:35.0 | In the early hours of Sunday the 26th of January, |
... |
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