The National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), has said that all known camps of the Boko Haram sect will be destroyed before the election scheduled to hold on March 28.
He also said that the Federal Government would not postponed the new date slated for the general elections again. Continue..
“All known Boko Haram camps will be taken out. They won’t be there. They will be dismantled,” Sambo Dasuki told the AFP news agency on Monday.
“Those dates will not be shifted again,” Dasuki said when asked if the polls, initially scheduled for February 14, could be pushed back further.
Dasuki said he believed the new military cooperation agreed two weeks ago between Nigeria and its neighbours – Cameroon, Chad and Niger – would prove decisive against Boko Haram.
Dasuki had urged election officials on Saturday to postpone the polls on the grounds that the military could not provide nationwide election security because all available resources were being deployed to the North-East to fight Boko Haram.
His justification for the delay was widely criticised, in part because the military was not primarily responsible for election security in Nigeria.
Troops have only been called in when police and civil defence units have needed reinforcements.
Dasuki said there was no political motive underlying his call for a delay.
“It’s not everybody who does things for selfish reasons. Some of us have a conscience,” he said.
Dasuki said the postponement could easily help the opposition All Progressives Congress, because improved security could boost turnout in the North-East, an APC stronghold.
The APC Presidential candidate, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), had while speaking exclusively to Al Jazeera on Sunday, said the elections should not have been postponed but that his party would ask their supporters to remain calm.
“There is no need for it [the delay],” he said.
“If the same military cannot secure 14 local governments out of the 774 in six years, how can they be sure they can secure those 14 in six weeks?
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