Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the Boko Haram terrorists are feeding on the media attention they are enjoying in the country as the oxygen needed to continue their heinous attacks on Nigeria.
““They will alter their goals and objectives at random, and are capable of doing anything and everything to continue feeding off the oxygen of media attention, ” Osinbajo said on Tuesday at the opening of the 8th National Security Seminar 2018 organised by the Alumni Association of the National Defence College in Abuja.
According to him, the Boko Haram sect was no longer a serious fighting force, despite the ugly incidents witnessed recently in Dapchi, Yobe State and Rann, Borno State.
He said the separate recent incidents of abduction of school girls in Dapchi and attack on aide workers were not indications that the government was fighting a war that cannot be won.
The Vice-President said the terrorists, who he described as “faceless,” were capable of doing anything to continue to get media attention, which he said was their oxygen.
He said, “Today’s enemies, loosely-structured non-state actors, sometimes faceless, choose to mutate. Yet, this should not be interpreted as meaning that we are fighting an unwinnable war. We can boldly say that today, Boko Haram is no longer a serious fighting force.”
Despite the latest incidents, Osinbajo said there should be no room for self-pity or frustration on the part of government.
According to him, the Dapchi and Rann incidents should, if anything, rekindle the determination of the government and the Armed Forces to permanently subdue terrorism in Nigeria.
Osinbajo said since the incidents happened, Nigeria’s security and intelligence chiefs have all mobilised to Yobe State and environs, and have been re-assessing their strategies and approaches to securing lives and property and containing the threat the sect poses.
He said government was, more than ever before, mobilising to ensure that schools in the North East are kept secure from Boko Haram.
