President Goodluck Jonathan on Sunday
said the excesses of the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram, must be curbed, not
minding what it would cost the government.
“The
excesses of Boko Haram must stop. That is the decision of this present government
now. It must stop, whatever it will cost the government, it must stop,” he said
in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in an interview with journalists on the sideline of
the 21st ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of
the Africa Union.
The
President boasted that the government had the wherewithal to confront the reign
of terror being unleashed by the sect members and that their actions were
already being confronted with his recent declaration of state of emergency in
Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.
On curbing Boko Haram, Jonathan told the
journalists that although terrorism was a global problem with the United States
and United Kingdom and other countries having their shares, his administration
was working hard to contain it in terms of immediate, medium and long-term
approaches.
He said, “For the short term, of course,
there must be military intervention, we must beef up security, we must change
the security architecture to make sure that we detect that something is about
to happen before it happens so that we will be able to stop it.
“We have stopped a number of incidents in the
country. It is just that the few that happened affect life and whenever life is
affected, you will not even think that somebody is doing anything.
“That is why recently I even had to declare a
state of emergency in three states so that we go all out to make sure that we
seize these weapons.
“A lot of free weapons come in because of the
Libyan crisis. We must seize them. They are illegal weapons and must be seized
and you cannot do that without declaring a state of emergency to enable the
military enter any house, whether it is a residential building or a church, a
mosque, a shrine, anywhere, and hotel. We will be able to enter and seize these
weapons.
“In the short term, it is to seize these
weapons. That is why those three states we have the worst cases; we declared a
state of emergency. By the time we finish combing, we would not have just
stopped it there but we would have seized most of the weapons they are using.
That is the short term.”
The President added that his government’s
medium term strategy was to concentrate more on education.
He observed that the part of the country,
where there had been prevalence of Boko Haram activities, has the highest rate
of school dropouts.
He said although the Constitution put the
issue of basic education under the purview of state and local governments, the
Federal Government still found it essential to intervene to make sure that
there is improvement in the sector.
Jonathan said the idea behind the
intervention was to make sure that people received education so that they would
not be easily brainwashed.
He said another government’s approach was to
create an economic environment that would afford individuals opportunities to
fend for themselves.
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Politics