Nigeria govt accuses world powers of frustrating war against Boko Haram, bandits

The Nigerian government has accused world powers of frustrating the war against Boko Haram and bandits terrorizing most part of the country. It has, therefore appealed to them to provide it weaponry to fight worsening insecurity in the country.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, who made the appeal on Thursday, when he featured on the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Forum in Abuja, regretted that the world powers were not doing enough to assist Nigeria defeat terrorists and other criminals waging war against the country.

He said, “I want to use this opportunity to say that the international community can help us better than they are doing right now.

“To fight terrorists, we need platforms and weapons. When the international community is weighed by unsubstantiated arguments to deny the country of vital platforms and weapons to fight insecurity, you cannot turn round to accuse the country of not fighting terrorism.”

Mohammed regretted that “certain world powers” had refused to even sell to us certain vital weapons.

He said, “For more than two to three years now, we have paid for certain vital weapons that they have not released to us and they even refused to give us spare parts.

“I think our appeal to them is that they should please help Nigeria to provide us with these sensitive platforms so that we can fight insecurity more effectively.”

According to Mohammed, Nigerians need to compare where the country was pre-2015 and today to be able to know the efforts President Muhammadu Buhari had made in the fight against insecurity.

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He said, “People should recognise the fact that today, people have weaponised the issues of religion and ethnicity.

“We are dealing with extremely unreasonable people, whether in the northwest or in the northeast.

“They should not forget that we are fighting non-conventional war and at the same time, these people have contacts everywhere.”

On part of the efforts by the Buhari’s administration to fight insecurity, Mohammed said both kinetic and non-kinetic approaches were being deployed including the use of economy and social intervention programmes meant to empower and engage the youths.

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