President of the Association of Industrial Security and
Safety Operators of Nigeria, Dr. Ona Ekhomu has commended President Muhammadu
Buhari on the fall of Sambisa Forest, the headquarters of the Boko Haram terrorist
group in Borno State, saying there are still challenges, reports ITRealms.
He also said that the capture of this important military
objective is a significant achievement in the fight against Boko Haram
terrorism and a major morale boost for the Nigerian military.
“Mr. President deserves high accolades for his focus,
commitment and the political will that resulted in the fall of Sambisa forest”
he said.
Dr. Ekhomu, a renowned security expert said that the Chief
of Army Staff Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai and the entire Nigerian military also
deserved high praise for their prowess in battle which resulted in the desired
outcome of routing Boko Haram terrorists from their last parcel of real estate
and achieving this important operational milestone on the war on terror.
Ekhomu however warned that the Nigerian authorities should
not be tricked into a false sense of security. “We shouldn’t think that it is
over with Boko Haram. We shouldn’t think that they have been defeated and they
are no longer a threat. That would be a big mistake. Boko Haramism is based on
Salafist jihadist ideology. So, in addition to battle-field defeat, their
perverted strict wahabbi ideology must be defeated before the war can be deemed
to be over. If not, the conflict continues,” he added.
In press release made available to ITRealms, the security
expert expatiated that BH is engaged in asymmetrical warfare against Nigeria,
and does not need real estate to prosecute its terrorist campaigns. “In
asymmetrical warfare, there are no front lines, no prescribed methods or means
of conflict,” he averred.
Based upon the displacement theory of crime, the senior leadership
personnel of BH are likely to have migrated to safer areas across the Nigerian
borders (Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, CAR or Mali). The field commanders should have gone into
hiding in Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu. “This position is
supported by the announcement by the Chief of Army Staff that a BH commander
was arrested in Lagos last week.”
“BH terrorists do not wear uniforms and they
look like everyone else in the general population. So, it is easy for their foot soldiers to
escape far from the northeast in search of refuge in the south or elsewhere. My
fear is that with leadership, these guys can regroup quickly and resume their
campaign of violence. We have seen this before in 2009 to 2010 when BH
pretended that it had been defeated by General Saleh Maina in Maiduguri only
for them to resume violence in Sepember 2010 by breaking out over 700 inmates
from Maiduguri Prisons -- mostly
radicalized fighters,” he said.
Ekhomu advised the government security forces to remain in a
state of high alert for the next 12 months on the BH problem. He urged the
intelligence services to work hard to uncover terror plots and urgently
intervene to save Nigerian lives. He advised the Police agency to be alert to
the presence of criminals and terrorists in their jurisdictions.
He called for
the adoption of criminal profiling and aggressive community oriented policing
strategies to identify BT terrorists in our communities. Ekhomu said that the
Civilian JTF operatives in Kasuwa Shanu in Maiduguri who detected and prevented
two female suicide bombers from accessing the crowded cow market and detonating
their explosive payload outside without killing anyone but the bombers, was an
example of this community oriented policing. At this crime scene on Monday
(Boxing Day), neither the police nor the military were present, yet the
Civilian JTF took action to save many lives and killing two suicide terrorists
in the process.
He urged the FG not to assume that BH is interested in
integrating into Nigerian society. He said: They are committed jihadists and
extremists and will only hide as a survival mechanism, and strike when the
opportunity presents itself.
He urged Nigerians to conduct background checks on
individuals who they hire as security guards, gardeners, house helps, etc. He
said that BH members are likely to speak little English and claim to be from Niger
Republic, Chad Republic. Prior to hiring West African nationals, they should be
asked to provide proof of permission by the Nigerian Immigration Service to
work in Nigeria.
The security expert urged the Immigration service to better
secure the borders and prevent the free movement of terrorists into and out of
Nigeria. He also exhorted immigration officials to eschew petty corruption at
the borders as it negates Nigeria’s national security interest.
He also urged the military to sustain the man-hunt for
Abubakar Shekau. He said that without forensic proof, it could not be assumed
that Shekau is dead. This mistake has been made several times with Shekau,
making him the proverbial cat with nine lives. He advised the military to
deploy massive intelligence assets in search of Abubakar Shekau whose
neutralization would signal the beginning of the end of Boko Haramism in
Nigeria.
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