President Muhammadu Buhari has again ordered the extermination of Boko Haram terrorists and bandits by December 2022, nine months before the end of his eight-year tenure.
“Our ultimate goal is to eliminate them all together and restore total peace in every inch of the Nigerian soil, that we are going to do, by God’s grace, by December of this year,” the regime’s interior minister, Rauf Aregbesola, said on Monday in Abuja.
The minister, suspecting that Nigerians had long lost hope in the regime to end insecurity, added that the government was fully determined this time and an order had been issued to concerned security agencies to meet the December deadline.
“It is sounding tall but take it home; we are determined to ensure that every inch of the Nigerian soil is safe. The determination is there and the order has been given,” Mr Aregbesola asserted at a joint press conference.
The conference was attended by information minister Lai Mohammed, minister of defence, Bashir Magashi and minister of police affairs minister, Mohammed Dingyadi.
Mr Aregbesola said that security agencies have “largely degraded the groups constituting the threats,” a statement that contradicts numerous security alerts issued by foreign nations like Canada and the U.S., warning their citizens to steer clear of parts of Nigeria.
“Our nation is faced and continue to face security challenges; the origin of these changes we must all know preceded our administration, regardless of what anybody wants to believe or say,” asserted Mr Aregbesola on Monday.
According to the minister, “Insecurity preceded us and there are insurgents in the North East, bandits in parts of the North West and North Central, militants in the South South, separatists in the South East and ritual killers in the South West.
“All over the country, we have constant attacks on pipelines, electricity cables and other critical national infrastructure. Crude and refined oil theft and kidnapping for ransom and farmers/herders’ clashes. Security agencies rose to these challenges and have largely degraded the group’s constituting the threats.”
Insisting that the threats have been neutralised, Mr Aregbesola said; “What we face mostly now are clashes of cowardly attacks from those have been routed in one local or the other moving to give the false impression that they are still strong…that is the essence of the scattered nature of their strikes.”
