‘Terrorism won’t stop overnight,’ Lai Mohammed says

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said that terrorism in Nigeria will not stop overnight.

He however said that the military had sufficiently degraded the capacity of Boko Haram to launch massive attacks, Vanguard reports.

Mohammed made the comments on Tuesday, December 8, 2015, during a press conference in Abuja.

“Winning the war against insurgency is about sufficiently degrading the insurgents’ capacity for action. This the military has substantially done. The rest is mop-up actions,” he said.

“The military has largely met the deadline issued by the President, and would have done so totally by December. The question, therefore, is no longer whether the military will be able to meet the December deadline, it is about how to give the military all the support it requires to continue to keep our country safe from the activities of the terrorists.

“Make no mistake about it, this will not stop overnight. It will gradually taper off. That is the way it happens anywhere such a war has been fought. It is also important to situate the deadline by the President in its necessary context. Insurgency is an asymmetrical warfare, not a ‘shooting war’ between two Armies.

No truce or armistice is ever signed to end such war. The implication is that while Boko Haram can no longer execute spectacular attacks, hold territories, declare a Caliphate and even collect taxes, lone wolf attacks – which are like the death pangs of a dying horse – will continue for some time and then fizzle out. This is the absolute truth,” he added.

President Muhammadu Buhari had given the Nigerian military till December 2015 to defeat the sect but recently said that the deadline could be modified.

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