The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has admitted that Nigeria is yet to defeat Boko Haram insurgents under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch, .
Lai Mohammed said that the country cannot effectively prosecute the decade-long war on terror with inadequate Military procurement, effectively undercutting the administration’s perennial denial that the counter-terrorism war had all but ended since December 2015.
The Information Minister, who reacted to the gruesome killing of 110 Farmers by Boko Haram terrorists in Borno State, over the weekend, said that the Federal Government’s counter-terrorism efforts are being hamstrung by insufficient Military hardware, despite the billions of naira and dollars released to tackle insurgency in the country.
He lamented that Nigeria’s entreaties to its foreign partners for assistance to upgrade its weaponry has not yielded results, hence the country may remain at the mercy of the dreaded jihadist group, which according to him, gets global funding.
His words: “We are dealing with terrorists who are financed globally, and we also need more support from global partners.
“Nigeria has made an attempt to acquire a better and more effective platform to deal with terrorists, but for one reason or the other, we have been denied this platform — these weapons.
“Without adequate weapons or platforms, we remain at the mercy of terrorists.”
The Minister made the comments at the Benue State Government House, in Makurdi, the State capital.
A former United States, US, envoy to Nigeria, James Entwistle, had earlier disclosed that the US refused to sell arms to the troubled West African nation, due to human rights infractions perpetrated by Nigerian troops.
Lai Mohammed however, described allegations against the Nigerian Military as “unsubstantiated”.
Lai Mohammed’s remark that Nigeria is at the mercy of Boko Haram, completely contradicts the government’s repeated assurance that the war against insurgency had been won long ago, and that the Nigerian Army is merely initiating a mop up operation to terminate remnants of the Boko Haram insurgents.
More news later…