By Abdullahi M. Gulloma
Governors in the northern part of the country are not doing enough to end the current security challenges in the region, Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, said yesterday.
Maku said this while briefing State House correspondents after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan.
He said instead of criticising federal government for extending the current State of Emergency in the affected states, northern governors should to do everything possible to re-organise the region’s social structure including grassroots mobilisation and information gathering mechanism to halt further destruction of innocent citizens.
He said the varieties of opinions among the political class help the confidence of terror groups because the objective is to divide public opinion and conveniently penetrate the Nigerian society and destroy it.
He said since terrorism was purely a psychological war which thrives on wrong ideology with guerrilla tactics approach is not conventional, northern governors must use mass mobilisation method to track down their movement and pass relevant information to security agencies for a more effective military operation.
He said: “The continuous bombing which is absolutely senseless and destructive underlines again the need for all of us in the country to come together and unite to confront the attack of terror on our country.
It is not the weaknesses of the armed forces; it is the same way the Americans are getting frustrated in Afghanistan. If the terrorists there were to stand against the Nigerian armed forces, they will not last 30 minutes and will be completely destroyed.
“Every governor of the 19 northern states must re-organise its people to monitor people at the grass root or local level. Until we have every state government determined to organise its people in terms of information gathering, we may not be able to defeat terror.”