North’s governors should do more to fight terrorism, says Fed Govt

The Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, has urged the 19 governors in the North to work harder at curbing insecurity in the region.

The minister said it was necessary for the North’s governors to really prepare their people against insurgency.

Maku addressed State House correspondents yesterday in Abuja at the end of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan.

The minister said northern governors should stop criticising the Federal Government’s decision to extend the state of emergency in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states.

According to him, terrorism is a community war, which all governors, especially those in the North, should work hard to end.

Maku said the governors should devise proper monitoring of all persons within, coming in and going out of their states.

The minister noted that the current war against insurgency, being restricted to the community level, cannot be won by the Federal Government merely sending troops to the affected states.

He said the cooperation of all Nigerians was needed to win the war across the country.

Maku said: “The war against terror is a Nigerian war. It is our cooperation that will defeat it; it is our understanding that will isolate the evil. It is the unity of purpose in the country that will lead to victory over terrorism.

“We need greater unity to break into what is going on and defeat it. That is why the grandstanding and politicking that is associated with the fight against terror is increasing the tempo of the activities of terrorists. The variety of opinions among the political class feeds into the confidence of terror groups because their objective is to divide public opinion and continuously penetrate the Nigerian society and destroy it.

“So, we continue to plead that all of us in the politics of this country need to think again to understand that the challenge we face is not to the advantage of anybody. We need to understand that politics aside, we need to save our country first.

“We need today the kind of work that will enable every preacher, every religious leader, to speak to their followers to be able to sensitise the people to support what is going on.

“Every state in the North needs to go back to the basics. That means …to deal with terror in each of the 19 Northern states, they must reorganise their people, from the smallest unit of the smallest village to the hamlets, to the wards, to the towns, to the districts.

“There must be a proper organisation of communities for proper information about the movements of people and activities that could lead to the destruction of lives and property.”

On the role the Federal government can play in the fight against insurgency, Maku said: “The Federal Government is a fire fighter. It does not own any constituency in the 19 Northern states. The Federal Government only sends soldiers and policemen when there is a fire on the roof, to put out that fire.

“But the real ground, where terrorists are operating, is at the local level, at the unit level, at the state level. Until we have every state government determined, not rhetorically but practically, to sit back and organise their people and take proactive measures, in terms of information gathering, in terms  of preparing people to be able to report, to confront, to organise themselves, we will not be able to defeat terror…”

- The Nation

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