Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president elect has resolved to take a strong stand against the Boko Haram sect which has carries out series of attacks in Nigeria through waves of bombings, assassinations and abductions.
The Boko Haram menace was one of the issues that made Buhari emerge victorious in the March 28 presidential election, defeating incumbent president, Goodluck Jobnathan, who many saw as too weak to take a strong firm against the insurgents.
Gen Buhari recently released an article in the New York Times, detailing how he intends to put an end to Boko Harm insurgency.
Excerpts of the Buhari’s opinion below:
On Tackling The Boko Haram Manace
My administration, which will take office on May 29, will act differently – indeed it is the very reason we have been elected. This must begin with honesty as to whether the Chibok girls can be rescued. Currently their whereabouts remain unknown. We do not know the state of their health or welfare, or whether they are even still together or alive. As much as I wish to, I cannot promise that we can find them: to do so would be to offer unfounded hope, only to compound the grief if, later, we find we cannot match such expectation. But I say to every parent, family member and friend of the children that my government will do everything in its power to bring them home.
What I can pledge, with absolute certainty, is that from the first day of my administration, Boko Haram will know the strength of our collective will and commitment to rid this nation of terror, and bring back peace and normalcy to all the affected areas. Until now, Nigeria has been wanting in its response to their threat: With our neighbours fighting hard to push the terrorists south and out of their countries, our military was not sufficiently supported or equipped to push north. As a consequence, the outgoing government’s lack of determination was an accidental enabler of the group, allowing them to operate with impunity in Nigerian territory.
That is why the answer to defeating Boko Haram begins and ends with Nigeria. That is not to say that allies cannot help us. My administration would welcome the resumption of a military training agreement with the United States, which was halted during the previous administration. We must, of course, have better coordination with the military campaigns our African allies, like Chad and Niger, are waging in the struggle against Boko Haram. But, in the end, the answer to this threat must come from within Nigeria.
We must start by deploying more troops to the front and away from civilian areas in central and southern Nigeria where for too long they have been used by successive governments to quell dissent. We must work closer with our neighbors in coordinating our military efforts so an offensive by one army does not see their country’s lands rid of Boko Haram only to push it across the border onto their neighbors’ territory.
But as our military pushes Boko Haram back, as it will, we must be ready to focus on what else must be done to counter the terrorists. We must address why it is that young people join Boko Haram. There are many reasons why vulnerable young people join militant groups, but among them are poverty and ignorance. Indeed Boko Haram – which translates in English, roughly, as “Western Education Is Sinful” – preys on the perverted belief that the opportunities that education brings are sinful.
On Provision Of Food For All
If you are starving and young, and in search of answers as to why your life is so difficult, fundamentalism can be alluring. We know this for a fact because former members of Boko Haram have admitted it: They offer impressionable young people money and the promise of food, while the group’s mentors twist their minds with fanaticism. So we must be ready to offer the parts of our country affected by this group an alternative.
Boosting education will be a direct counterbalance to Boko Haram’s appeal. In particular we must educate more young girls, ensuring they will grow up to be empowered through learning to play their full part as citizens of Nigeria and pull themselves up and out of poverty. Indeed, we owe it to the schoolgirls of Chibok to provide as best an education as possible for their fellow young citizens.
Boko Haram feeds off despair. It feeds off a lack of hope that things can improve. By attacking a site of learning, and kidnapping more than 200 schoolgirls, it sought to strike at the very place where hope for the future is nurtured, and the promise of a better Nigeria. It is our intention to show Boko Haram that it will not succeed. My government will first act to defeat it militarily and then ensure that we provide the very education it despises to help our people help themselves. Boko Haram will soon learn that, as Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Meanwhile, Yesterday, April 15 marked one year since Boko Haram stormed a Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno state, kidnapping over 200 female students in the dead of the night.
Nigerians are still perplexed that after one year of the Chibok Kidnap there were yet no clues about their whereabouts.
A cross section of Nigerians have also called on the incoming government of the Gen Buhari to make the rescue of the the girls a top priority, just as they urge the military to do more to spare the country the distress and tackle the Boko Haram insurgency.
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