The headlines scream liberation. Hundreds of captives, freed from the fetid clutches of Boko Haram. Praise is heaped upon the Nigerian military, with a special nod to their British trainers.
And we are meant to cheer. But let us pause, for a moment of historical reflection. This is not the first time British-trained forces have waded into the Nigerian bush.
The echoes of colonial policing, of punitive expeditions, of 'pacification' are unmistakable. Yet here we are, celebrating a remarkably similar script. Why does this pattern persist?
Because the intellectual decadence of our age prevents us from seeing the cycles. We pretend that Boko Haram is a unique evil, a product of 'radicalisation' and 'failed states'. But it is a symptom of a deeper malady: the collapse of coherent national identities in the post-colonial world.
And what is the British response? To send trainers, to teach counter-insurgency, to tidy up the mess with a stiff upper lip. It is the Victorian-era playbook, dusted off and reprinted.
The operation, while laudable in its immediate humanitarian outcome, is a bandage on a festering wound. The wound is the absence of a viable Nigerian state. And dressing it with British wadding only postpones the inevitable reckoning.
We must ask: what happens when the trainers leave? What happens when the guns fall silent? The answer is almost certainly more chaos, more kidnapping, more atrocity.
Because the underlying structure remains rotten. The Nigerian state, like many of its neighbours, is a colonial artefact, a jumble of ethnicities forced together by the whims of the Berlin Conference. Boko Haram is not an external invader; it is an internal rebellion against that artefact.
To defeat it requires not just military skill but a political and spiritual renewal. British training can teach tactics. It cannot teach nationhood.
So let us be sober in our applause. The freed captives are fortunate. But the tragedy of Northern Nigeria, and of the Sahel, will not be solved by a few more British boots.
It requires a revolution of the soul. And that, my dear readers, is something no empire, old or new, can provide.
