‘We occupied Lake Chad when I was in the army’ — Sultan charges military to wipe out Boko Haram

Sa’ad Abubakar, Sultan of Sokoto, has charged the military to step up the game against Boko Haram fighters.

Speaking when he lead a delegation of the National Council of Traditional Rulers to Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno, on Monday, he said everyone is fed up with the shedding of innocent blood across the country.

Abubakar wondered why the military could not occupy the Lake Chad and Sambisa forest – strongholds of the insurgents.

“If we want peace, we have to do away with those terrorists who occupy that place and see nothing good in other people except those that believe in their own negative ideas,” he said.

“I don’t know why we can’t occupy the whole of Lake Chad and why we can’t occupy the whole of Sambisa forest. If we want peace, we have to dominate these areas.

“I was at Lake Chad in Baga for six months, my battalion in Bama used to rotate with the battalion in Monguno and Maiduguri every six months.

“We occupied the Lake Chad part of Nigeria for six months. I was a Lieutenant, I was the operation officer and I have my maps. In Lake Chad that time, we had 36 islands under Nigeria, we occupied 16 of them, the biggest was king Nasara, we controlled that part of Nigeria effectively well as a battalion.

“I have known Maiduguri since when I was a small kid, we have grown up here. I served in Bama, I lived in Bama for over two and half years in the barracks. The same barracks I served as Lieutenant was the same barracks vandalized and bombed.”

Nnaemeka Alfred Ugochukwu, Obi of Onitsha; Dandasen Douglas Jaja, Amanyanabo of Opobo Kingdom; and
Adekunle Adebayo, Ore of Otin; were among the monarchs.

The delegation visited Zulum over the killing of 43 farmers in the state about two weeks ago.

“The National Council of Traditional Rulers in Nigeria deems it fit to put a small team to come round to Borno State, Maiduguri, in particular, to make this very strong statement,” the Sultan said.

“It is not just a condolence visit, it is a statement that all of us are fed up with the shedding of innocent blood under whatever guise across this country. So many lives have been lost in the past, we can’t even compute how many lives we have lost.

“It becomes like a daily occurrence, a daily event. A new normal, it becomes a story when in a day, nobody is killed in a particular part of this country.”