Zulum: Insurgency in Borno has reduced by 80%

Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno, says the surrender of Boko Haram militants has contributed to reducing insurgency in the state by 80 percent.

As of November 2021, the Nigerian Army had said over 15,000 insurgents and their family members had surrendered to troops.

The federal government’s programme aimed at rehabilitating insurgents who have surrendered has attracted criticism, including from victims of insurgency who have rejected the decision.

Speaking with state house correspondents at the Aso Rock villa on Thursday, Zulum said “social cohesion” is one of the measures needed to achieve stability in the north-east region.

“I think those that are saying this are not aware of what is going on in Borno state. In Borno state, these people voluntarily surrendered by themselves,” he said.

“There is no provision, nor any law in the whole world, which states that those that have voluntarily surrendered shall be killed. And because of this surrender, amongst others, the insurgency situation in Borno state has been reduced by about 80 percent.

“We also became resilient enough to fight them. Involvement of civilian JTF, community resilience, enhancing peace building, social cohesion and stability are some of the things that we need to do in order to reduce insurgency.”

Zulum said the operations of the multinational joint task force (MNJTF) would curb the activities of the insurgents around the Lake Chad region.

On his part, Bello Matawalle, Zamfara governor, said his administration has been collaborating with the Nigerien authorities to fight gunmen destabilising the north-western region of Nigeria.

“We need to have a joint task force between the Nigerian and Nigerien security, and we will provide some logistics for them in order to ease their operations,” Matawalle said.

“What we are doing is that if we have any information about bandits that are coming from Niger, then we are going to reach them from Nigeria and alert the Nigerien security to monitor and push them so that we can collectively fight these criminals.”