Senator-elect for Ondo South Senatorial District Jimoh Ibrahim has said the Boko Haram insurgency is a political problem and asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to return troops to the barracks.
Ibrahim who featured on Channels Television’s Politics Today said, “Boko Haram is a political problem. You have to socialise politically to solve Boko Haram. The first thing Mr President has to do is to withdraw soldiers from the front (line) and return them to the barracks.”
He said the “children who left the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) as lieutenants have become major-generals and the war is still there. Is the military a challenge to itself? No!”
As Nigerian authorities have been battling insurgency for over a decade, the senator-elect said the military had been deploying a conventional strategy to an unconventional war.
He blamed the alleged failure in the fight against terrorism on the strategy deployed by the authorities in the North East zone.
According to Ibrahim, Africa’s most populous nation has spent a whopping $1.2 trillion fighting insurgency within the last 20 years.
Rather than deploying troops to the theatre of operations, he asked the government to “look for information gathering, socialisation, you need to meet stakeholders, you have to do meetings.”
Last modified: June 7, 2023
