Boko Haram Insurgency May Not End by December -GOWON

A former military Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, on Tuesday disagreed with President Muhammadu Buhari and the Nigerian military over the December deadline to end the Boko Haram insurgency....

President Buhari had ordered the military to end the insurgency in three months, ending December 2015.

But Gowon stated categorically that the war against Boko Haram insurgency might not end by December as being planned by the federal government because nobody can really talk about when any particular operation was going to end.
Though the former Head of State expressed confidence in the military’s renewed efforts in flushing out insurgents in the country, he noted that it was out of place for someone to say it would end at a particular time.

Gowon said no one could be certain when the insurgency would end.
He however urged Nigerians to use prayers as an alternative and effective weapon to defeat Boko Haram, which is capable of changing the hearts and minds of the insurgents.

Gowon, who spoke in Abakaliki shortly after an advocacy visit to the Ebonyi State Governor, Chief Dave Umahi, on the roll back malaria programme, enthused that with the present strategies adopted by the military in the fight, the insurgency will soon be flushed out.

He further regretted the use of innocent young girls in the
perpetration of suicide attacks by the terrorist group, noting that there were possibilities of ending the insurgency before the December 2015 deadline.

According to him, “I can tell you this, nobody can really talk about when any particular operation is going to end. As a former commander-in-chief, I know this. Yes, you can say, you target a particular time, but it may finish before that time or it may go slightly beyond. To end it, that to me is the most important thing.”

“The war against insurgency started during the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan but the military just before the election did a tremendous job against the group which made it possible for elections to be conducted in North-east.”

“Since then, with the coming in of President Buhari, work is also being done until the insurgents decided to be sending poor little innocent girls to do some of the crimes they engage in. But I can assure you that the insurgency would soon end. I have the confidence that very soon with what the military is doing at the moment, the group would be flushed out.”

Gowon, who was in the state to seek the support of the State government in the fight against malaria and the four tropical diseases, urged Nigerians not to lose confidence in the military, reassuring that with the new Chief of Army Staff, the war would soon.

In his remarks, the state Governor, Umahi represented by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Bernard Odoh, said sustainable development could not be achieved with such diseases ravaging the state and urged the group to decentralise the implementation of the advocacy process to enable the local government benefit from the programme.

Prof Odoh said that such diseases could be linked to dirty environment and urged the people to cue into the environmental policy of the state which intends to achieve a clean and conducive environment.

Earlier, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Daniel Umezurike, denied insinuations in some quarters that there was a polio case in the state and noted that from the result of the test received by the state government, there was no polio outbreak in the state as was speculated in some quarters.

According to him, “we decided to embark on the immunisation of children within the area to ensure we check-mate the spread in a situation it was discovered that the case was a polio case but from the result gotten, it was not a case of polio.”