It’ll take 30 years to defeat Boko Haram – Army

Acting director of Nigerian Army Information Management, Brig-Gen. Folorunso Oyinlola has said that it will take a minimum of 30 years to eradicate the ongoing Boko Haram insurgency going on in the North East region of the country.

Brig-Gen. Oyinlola who spoke in Benin at the 22nd Edition of Social Media Seminar on Civil-Military Relations said that it will take a new generation of North Easterners who will have to be educated before the militants can be completely wiped out.

The deputy military spokesman said that the new generation will have to be educated and re-oriented before Nigeria can truly declare victory.

He recalled that former President Olusegun Obasanjo was proactive when he sought to nip the activities of the Nigerian Taliban in the bud in during his twilight years but lamented that things however took a turn for the worse when Alhaji Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of the dreaded Boko Haram sect were killed by policemen.

Oyinlola said: “Insurgency is not something that can be filtered away with the snap of a finger. The insurgents live with us. We can’t bomb the whole of Edo State under the guise of fighting Boko Haram.

“We’ll need a minimum of 30 years to be able to defeat the Boko Haram. We will need a new generation of North Easterners who will have to be educated for us to declare that we have defeated Boko Haram.”

He said that the civil war in Libya which is yet to be resolved has led to the destabilization of the West African subregion as lots of weapons have poured in from the North African country, exacerbating the security situation in Nigeria and elsewhere.

The Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen. Faruk Yahaya who was represented by Maj-Gen. Marcus Kangye, the head of Civil Military Affairs solicited the support of media practitioners to wipe out the insurgents.

Gen. Yahaya appealed to social media influencers to be mindful of screaming, gory and scary headlines for the sake of national interests and humanity, adding that such headlines largely negate the purposes and objectives of the Nigerian Army from achieving the whole essence of their operations.

(Tribune)