Boko Haram ‘gone forever’

Some female supporters of President Muhammadu Buhari stormed the presidential villa in Abuja on Monday to say the Boko Haram sect is gone forever.

The women under the aegis of the Coalition of Nigerian Women for Peace, carried various placards with inscriptions such as “We thank PMB”, “Abuja Without Bomb and Boko Haram”, among others.

Led by Jaiyeola Mohammed, their convener, the women said despite threats by some persons four years ago, the will of God and the votes of Nigerians made Buhari win the election.

“We recall clearly those dark days when no one feels safe even inside Abuja, the nation’s capital. The roads leading to major institutions were sealed off to effectively convert most of the major roads into cul-de-sacs and two way roads where there were originally dual carriages,” she said.

“The situation was so bad that those the citizens should look up to for protection cordoned themselves in with concrete barriers as they fear for their own lives from Boko Haram.

“The reach of terror was speeding south and has spread as far down as Okene in Kogi state where the group had established cells.

“There was even an attack on troops’ convoy going through the state. Kaduna, Kano, Adamawa, Yobe, Gombe, Nassarawa, Plateau, Niger and other neighbouring states were practically in the grip of terror as the extremists had brought themselves to a point where they could strike in any of these places.

“But all that was before President Muhammadu Buhari came into office and gave the nation military chiefs that merit every single pip on their regalia.”

Mohammed said it is on record that those who had vowed to make the country ungovernable did not relent in trying to use Boko Haram to actualise that threat.

She said they gave material, intellectual, political and tactical support to insurgents in their bid to “keep the killers in place” and torment the rest of us, law abiding citizens.

“Thankfully, the military has been up to the task. The Nigerian Army has repeatedly trounced and punished the Boko Haram terrorists, living them no hiding place, chasing them from the aforementioned states into Sambisa Forest from where they have been chased into the desert; whatever remains of the group is being hunted down and dispatched from being able to terrorise the citizens anymore.

“The Air Force has seen to it from the skies that the terrorists have no hiding place. The Navy is perishing their thoughts of turning Lake Chad into a haven. The Intelligence Network is keeping itself several steps ahead of them. The ones with hope are Nigerians who will again live without the fear of Boko Haram terrorists.

” This is contrary to the hype being promoted by the sponsors of these killers that they are on the rise again. We have seen through this trickery of these sponsors sending their fighters to carry out occasional attacks and then use this to ramp up fear among the population. The Nigerian Army is the expert in this matter and it is their assessment we will believe.

“However, even before General Buratai gave his assessment that the areas left to root out this evil from is Northern Borno, we had done our own homework and concluded that Kano, Kaduna, Adamawa, Kogi, Yobe, Gombe, Niger, Nassarawa and other states have not only become safe but are also concretely beyond the reach of Boko Haram. Abuja that once wore a chain of barricades has become a thriving city where Boko Haram is only discussed in the context of news reporting of successive military gains over the group.

“Our expectations are that this show of appreciation will push the military to pulverize whatever is left of the terrorists, who must be chased into the direst and hottest part of the Sahara Desert. We are aware that there have been several calls on those remaining to give up their evil ways and they refused to repent, we therefore have nothing against the military unleashing disproportionate force to flush these recalcitrant remnants out of existence.”