Apparently not impressed by the military’s handling of counter terrorism campaign, a group of retired military officers yesterday demand call back by military authorities to end the Boko Haram insurgency.
The leader of the ex-servicemen in Bauchi state, Captain Musa Yakubu (rtd), said this yesterday in an interview on BBC Hausa Service monitored in Kaduna.
He said: “We have just finished meeting and resolved to write to the Presidency, Minister of Defence, Service Chiefs, President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the need to need to call back ex-soldiers to action in view of the unending terrorism the country. We told them if they want an end to this, they should engage retired soldiers that are able.
“Those that are physically fit should be called back; those that are not very fit will be in strategy and mapping out how to succeed in this crisis. This is what we are saying.”
On whether their call back demand was belated, four years after the insurgency started, he said: “No, it is not late, we have been demanding for this role in the last four years. When General Azazi, the National Security Adviser was in office, he invited me and three of us discussed in his office. He promised to call us back but we never heard from the authorities again, there seem to be something that only they and God knows.”
He alleged that the huge amounts of money being appropriate in tackling insurgency were being mismanaged, saying that the state of emergency declared in the first and second phase “is nonsense and waste of time while the crisis is escalating.”
Boasting that they would tackle the insurgency, Yakubu stressed: “We can, we have ways and capacity, previous governments have invested in training us on tackling guerrilla and insurgency; and this is what we are facing now. How many of the serving officers have this background? There is none of them.”
