The Federal government of Nigeria is not sincere and seems to be deceiving the people about the fight against the Boko Haram terrorist especially in the area of providing modern detective gadgets to the military , Borno state Deputy Governor Alhaji Zanna Umar Mustapha has said.
Mustapha said the ongoing insurgency would have been a thing of the past if the Federal government had shown genuine commitment in assisting affected states especially Borno .
Speaking with senior reporters in Maiduguri Mustapha revealed that despite huge budgetary allocations to the Ministry of Defence, in the past two years, for the purpose of equipping the military,only little or nothing has been seen on ground to that effect.
‘The federal government cannot be said to be serious about ending this Boko Haram problem when billions of naira is said to be allocated to the security sector yet they deployed troops that lack common modern gadgets to detect arms or sniff buried explosives’, he said.
‘We cannot continue like this; we have said it time and again that the Boko Haram conflict is not something that must be tackled with boots and bullets alone’, Mustapha said.
‘Apart from using force, we also have to use gadgets and intelligence just like it is being done in the advanced countries’.
The deputy governor lamented further that ‘in this modern day Nigerian coupled with the huge funds being pumped into the security sector, the fight against terrorism is still being done manually. If the federal government is not deceiving us, how come the military and other sister security agencies cannot boast of having common devises used in tracking phones – not to mention of arms detecting machines’.
‘This is quite frustrating and it is compelling some of us to ask questions about what happened to the much money released for the purpose of fighting insecurity, why are we not seeing modern equipment being used here in Borno state by the military?’
The Borno number – two also berated Abuja for not keeping promises especially as it concerns the welfare of the people of Borno state. He specifically pointed the refusal of the federal government to release the about N260 million it allocated to Borno as its share of fund released to states ravaged by the last flood disaster across the country.
‘Up till date our government have not received a dime to that effect as announced in the media’, lamented Zannah.
‘We cannot say what our crime is to suffer such cold attitude of federal government towards Borno. But it is rather disappointing, to say the least, for such fund to be denied Borno up to this time when other states with lesser flood experience, were given theirs not long ago, the Presidency has not giving it a thought to visit Borno to see how the people are faring.