Thursday 16 April, 2026

Nigeria buried a Brigadier General yesterday. It was a ceremony the Commander-in-Chief did not attend.

Brigadier General Oseni Braimah was buried on Wednesday at the Maimalari Cantonment Cemetery in Maiduguri, with full military honours.

He was the Brigade Commander of the 29 Task Force Brigade of Operation Hadin Kai. That is the military's name for its counter-insurgency mission in the northeast. He was killed on April 9 when Boko Haram and ISWAP fighters launched a coordinated attack on military positions in Benisheikh, along the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway. Captain Azubuike Michael Esimai and other soldiers died in the same attack.

The burial was attended by the Borno Governor, the Minister of Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff, and the Chief of Army Staff. Not the President. Not the Vice President.

Nigeria has been fighting insurgency in the northeast for more than a decade. In that time, it has lost soldiers of every rank to ambushes, IED attacks, and direct assault. The pattern that emerged during that decade is familiar. The army buries its dead with military rites. Officials deliver tributes. The ceremony ends. The war continues.

What Benisheikh tells you is that the war is not winding down. A Brigade Commander is not a junior officer. His formation commands an entire task force brigade in one of the most contested corridors in the northeast. A coordinated attack on his position, on a major highway in daylight, is not a stray encounter. It's a signal about the reach and capability of the groups the military has been fighting since 2009.

The government has been spending on security. A 2024 appropriation allocated hundreds of billions to defence. Fighter jets have been discussed and acquired. The argument is that the investment is working. That casualty figures are down. That territory has been reclaimed. That the northeast is more stable than it was.

Brigadier General Braimah's family was at the cemetery on Wednesday. His colleagues carried his flag. The bugle sounded and flags were lowered. And the record now shows that the man responsible for the armed forces could not find the time to be there.

What that absence costs is not measurable in policy terms. But soldiers notice it. Families notice it. And in a war that has asked Nigerians in uniform to die on roads the rest of the country barely uses, it costs something. No announcement can pay that back.