By Chibuike Nwabuko
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial District, at the National Assembly, Comrade Shehu Sani has called on the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai to stop setting dates and timelines for defeating insurgents and capturing of their leaders, saying it leads to insurgence of their violence against soft targets.
Sani who made the call on Tuesday on his twitter handle @shehusani said, “Setting dates to defeat the insurgents or making public timelines for the capture of their leaders only leads to resurgence of their violence against soft targets”.
Sundiata Post recalls that the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai had on July 21, handed down an order to the Theatre Commander, Operation Lafiya Dole, Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, to capture dead or alive within 40 days the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau from wherever he is hiding in Nigeria.
Immediately after such timelines are set, the insurgents will intensify their attach on innocent soft targets.
The military had several times in the past claimed it had killed Mr. Shekau, only for the Boko Haram leader to later show up in videos mocking either the military or the nation’s top officials.
On August 23, 2016, had issued a statement announcing that Mr. Shekau was inflicted with “fatal injury” in a major air strike on Boko Haram’s location in the dreaded Sambisa Forest.
On March 28 this year, the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan-Ali, had a closed-door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja, after which he reassured Nigerians that the army would soon apprehend Mr. Shekau.
According to him, “If you have had the opportunity to go to Sambisa (forest in Borno), you will know that Boko Haram has been defeated, go and see what is happening in Sambisa.
“We have dominated the whole stronghold where they used to be, there is where we call ‘camp zairo’ where their spiritual and their strong headquarters that they were using as communication base was destroyed and as at the same time occupied by our men of the armed forces