Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris says the terrorist groups, Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have been largely dissipated and are “on their last legs.”
He said before, they were holding territories especially in the Northeast part of Nigeria, Local Governments, towns and cities. But now, it’s no longer the case as they are crushing them,” adding that they no longer have the kind of force that they had at the beginning.
“I mean, they’ve been largely dissipated. They’ve ran into the bushes coming to take some soft targets. We’re not saying that we have 100% exterminated Boko Haram. But I think that we’ve degraded Boko Haram significantly for them to pose any kind of significant challenge for us as a country,” he said.
The Information Minister, who stated these during an interview with France 24, also denied the allegation that the Nigerian government formed the Lakurawa group to aid France in fighting Niger.
However, Governor of Borno State, Babagana Umara Zulum, this week raised the alarm that the State seems to be losing ground to terrorists.
According to him: “Many military locations were dislodged, especially in Wulgo, Sabongari, Wajirko, among others. It seems we are losing ground and this is a very important thing we need to discuss. Peace gradually returned to Borno within the last three years, but we are witnessing sporadic attacks in recent times.”
He called for the deployment of fighter helicopters and the newly procured drones to support military operations in the affected locations.
“While we commend the Nigerian military, police, Department of State Security (DSS), as well as the paramilitary in maintaining law and order in the State, we also have to tell the truth; otherwise, all the gains we have made so far will be a mirage,” he said.
Speaking on Nigerians becoming poorer than they are in the last 10 years, Idris pointed out that since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu came to power, there has been some upward movement, saying, “The 1st quarter of 2024, we saw the GDP moving from 2.3 per cent to 3.84 and we are already begin to see indication that it will go further up, so yes we have this decline in the last decade but also seen some movement of upward and I think it is getting better.”
Reacting to the case of four West African countries recently experiencing coups, the minister dissuaded any fear saying that Nigeria has fairly strong democratic institutions.
“We don’t have that fear; we have fairly strong democratic institutions in our country. We’ve been running a democracy now. In the next two months, we will be 26 years old. So fairly we are getting stronger, the institutions are becoming more institutionalized and we don’t have that fear. Of course, coups are not desirable. We don’t want them to happen anywhere. We encourage people to go with democratic that is the way to go.”
