Boko Haram: How to end the war

There seems to be no letup in the Boko Haram insurgency in the country even as President Goodluck Jonathan has told a surprised nation that the situation is a temporary one. Jonathan spoke in Abuja after insurgents carried out a devastating  early morning attack, which claimed the lives of over 100 Nigerians and destroyed property worth millions of Naira at Nyanya Motor Park, on the outskirts of the Federal Capital.

Before the Nyanya attack, the Federal Government had taken steps in the past to bring the Boko Haram insurgency  under check, but these efforts had seemed like pouring water on the surface of the rock.
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For instance, as far back as  September 2011 and at the height of the Boko Haram attacks,  the President had summoned a security council meeting where he directed the security chiefs to halt the activities of the marauding insurgents. This was after the alarming bombing of the United Nations building in Abuja and the senseless killing of innocent workers of the world body.

To follow this up, government had declared a state of emergency in the three most affected states of the insurgency-Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. The idea of a state of emergency in these states was to give the military enough teeth to battle the insurgents, whose activities have moved a notch higher to raiding, killing and kidnapping innocent school children in the North eastern part of the country.

However, the recent bombing and killing of innocent people in Nyanya and the abduction of school children in Bornu State have heightened fears that if nothing urgent is done now to bring the activities of the insurgents under control, Nigerians may wake up one morning to realise, albeit to their regret, that they do not have a country to call their own again.

The realisation of this has led to a frantic search by both the government and the people to the problem of Boko Haram insurgency in the country. Sunday Sun sought the views of some notable Nigerians on how to end the insurgency.

Article source: http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=60523