SAN FRANCISCO, July 31, (THEWILL) – The Presidency has insisted that the war against Boko Haram insurgency has been won, despite recent attacks by the insurgents in the North-East.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Garba Shehu, said this in a statement saying what is happening is an increase of trans-border crimes and the proliferation of small arms in the Lake Chad Basin area.
“The position of the Nigerian government is that the Boko Haram terrorism has been degraded and defeated. The real Boko Haram we know is defeated.
“What we have now is a mixture of remnants of the Boko Haram, fugitive criminals, and the Islam in Maghreb together with West African terrorists bonding together.
“This is a fall out of the collapse of the Libyan State, and from farther away, of the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. They are taking advantage of our porous Sahelian borders,” the presidential aide.
He noted that the nation has witnessed an increase of trans-border crimes and the proliferation of small arms in the Lake Chad Basin area as a result of what he described as ‘these international gangs’.
According to Shehu, outrages are common in Niger, Mali, Chad, and Cameroon while Nigeria is a large country covering nearly one million square kilometres.
“This is roughly equivalent to the size of France and Germany put together. In addition to our porous borders, in the neighbouring Sahel-Sahara region, a lot of ungoverned areas provide haven for terrorists’ occupation and training.
“Without the tremendous efforts of our armed forces and the joint operations by the Nigeria-led Multinational Joint Task Force, MNJTF, formed by the countries of the Lake Chad Basin, this single problem of illegal arms flow would have been much worse.
“At present, terrorist activities have been confined to the remote, rural agrarian areas of Borno State and pockets of outrages in Adamawa and Yobe States.
Shehu disclosed that the Muhammadu Buhari administration has embarked on an electronic and digital border monitoring scheme to curtail the porosity of the borders.
