18th September, 2014
In the wake of Boko Haram’s recent territorial conquest, the insurgents have taken another step to rub Nigeria’s face in the mud by installing two emirs in two of the towns they conquered two weeks ago. The two towns are Gwoza and Damboa in Borno State. This was the shocking revelation made on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday when the upper chamber of the National Assembly resumed from its two-month recess.
Senator Ali Ndume, once implicated and arrested for allegedly having links with the terrorist group, told his colleagues in the Senate about how Boko Haram have been overrunning towns in Borno, his state. This prompted the Senators to call on President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a full scale war against the fundamentalists.
The insurgents have been treated with kid gloves for too long. That is why they seem to be getting away with their atrocities. For the umpteenth time, we call on President Jonathan to mobilize resources and military personnel to take the battle to the insurgents wherever they are. Frenzied preparations for the 2015 general elections by elected public office holders have overshadowed the Boko Haram menace, thus giving the terrorists the leeway to seized territories, kidnap women and children and routinely slaughter Christian men who refuse to convert to Islam.
It is a slap on the nation’s sovereignty and the height of treason for Boko Haram to declare a Nigerian territory an Islamic caliphate and go ahead to install its own emirs in the conquered territories. This effrontery goes to show that the Islamic Republic is gaining a foothold in the Northeast and unless the Federal Government stops living in denial but move quickly to sweep the insurgents away, the nation is doomed.
If President Jonathan could mobilise over 80,000 security personnel for election duty in Osun State, why couldn’t he flood areas threatened or captured by Boko Haram with equal number of troops or even more to flush out the terrorists? Experts say swarming Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states where the insurgents are having a free rein with a lot of troops is one of the ways to blunt their attempt to overrun those states.
What are Jonathan’s priorities? Must he wait until more towns fall into the hands of the terrorists before he crushes them? He must tame the Boko Haram incubus before seeking re-election. The military’s latest conquest in Konduga where it repelled the terrorists and seized their APC and arms should be sustained until the insurgents are completely flushed out from the strongholds they are occupying. They must not be allowed to dig in further.