Buhari will crush Boko Haram – Babangida

DANIEL AMASINGHA, Minna & ABDUL YAHAYA

Former military president, Ibrahim Babangida, has said that he has “implicit confidence” that President Muhammadu Buhari will crush Boko Haram.

In a special Eid-el-Fitri message, yesterday, Babangida said recent activities of the insurgents have “continued to raise our adrenaline in a season of apprehension and utter suspicion, about our security engagements and the sum total of our collective sufferance as a nation”.

In a rare open attack on the insurgents, Babangida said: “We have seen the worst of human follies in the conduct of these avoidable carnage and bloodletting by unscrupulous persons under the guise of religion, doing havoc to our sense of nationality”.

He made a series of suggestions on how to tackle the insurgency, saying: “At this stage of our national history especially with the insecurity we presently experience, it is appropriate for us to device new ways and means of confronting this hydra headed insurgency, without making such initiatives public knowledge.

“Media intelligence is required in helping to assemble information and distilling such information in a manner that would benefit the fight against terrorism. Going by the news and information we get every day, I feel very strongly that the media has a greater role to play in the management of information.

“The type of headlines and lead stories that are promoted in favour of the insurgents could only help to motivate members of Boko Haram rather than demotivate them. I expect, with a deep sense of patriotism, to see a greater deal of positive news promoted in support of military efforts at confronting this menace than a celebration of Boko Haram carnage, day in and day out.

“The President, General Muhammadu Buhari as a military officer, understands the import of these altruistic suggestions and I trust that he will take steps to apply some of them that fit into the mainstream strategies already in place.

“The approach has to be a holistic one, well coordinated with full onslaught launched by the day and night to rout these insurgents to surrender.

“I have implicit confidence in my mind that the president will put the final nail on the coffin of Boko Haram so that Nigeria can truly assume her greatness in the comity of nations.”

Meanwhile, barely 48 hours after they attacked Mainok town in Borno State, which left over 30 persons dead and most part of the village burnt, Boko Haram terrorists yesterday returned to attack villagers returning to count their losses.

Commuting along the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway was halted again for the fourth ‎time in a week, as security operatives battle to prevent Eid-el-Fitri holiday travellers from driving into an ambush by the insurgents.

Villagers reported 15 persons killed on Tuesday night as Boko Haram fighters carried on days of attacks on the only safe route linking other parts of the country with Maiduguri, the birth place of the Boko Haram insurgency.

Warsala, a village located on the boundary between Borno and Yobe states, was the latest community along the Kano-Maiduguri highway that is being attacked by Boko Haram extremists.

The agrarian community is not more than 5km from Ngamdu, another village along the highway that buried 10 persons killed by Boko Haram terrorists on Friday night.

The Tuesday night attack on Warsala came barely 24 hours after the same terrorists attacked Mainok, a village located along the same highway and about 40km away from Warsala.

A traveller along the route, Hamza Baba, told reporters yesterday that he drove through a village practically deserted, even as he sighted some smoking trailer trucks by the road side.

“The trucks were attacked and burnt by Boko Haram terrorists who shot their drivers,” said Baba, a government worker travelling to his home town for the Eid-el-Fitri celebration.

“A villager, who had luggage on his head and standing by the road side to catch a vehicle to Damaturu, informed me that the attack took place at about 8p.m when the gunmen arrived Warsala shooting sporadically.”

He said eight persons were found dead this morning and that he had to flee because the gunmen said they would still be back.

“Another trailer conveying commodities to Maiduguri was attacked, and the driver killed early this morning in Ngamdu village about 2 kilometres away from Warsala, which is a village under Yobe State.

“This has forced the village to start fleeing their homes en masse this morning. I saw more than 3000 of them leaving; many were trekking, some were conveyed in trucks. The Damaturu-Maiduguri highway is becoming a dead zone; this is the fourth attack this week from Monday. I wonder why intensive patrol measures is not being launched to stop this”, said Baba, who communicated his concerns via social chat platform, WhatsApp.

In a related development, the Commanding Officer, 72 Special Forces Battalion, Makurdi, Timothy Lagbaja, has said that the battalion lost 28 soldiers to insurgency in the North-East and in Benue.

Lagbaja, a colonel, told newsmen in Makurdi yesterday that between 2012 and 2015, the battalion lost four officers and eight soldiers to the Tiv/Fulani and Agatu crises in Benue.

He said the remaining 16 were lost to insurgency in the North-East, while many others who sustained various degrees of injuries were either flown abroad or treated in the country.

The commander said the battalion alone had deployed about 500 soldiers to serve in the special security outfit ‘Operation Zenda’ to maintain internal security in the state.

According to him, the effort is paying off as weapons hitherto in the hands of wrong people have been recovered.

He said that the high criminality in the state had been reduced to “few isolated cases of killings”.