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We warned Jonathan on how to tackle Boko Haram but he ignored us – Northern Elders' Forum

Published

10 years ago

March 15, 2014

The Northern Elders’ Forum, NEF, has disclosed that it earlier
warned President Jonathan on how best to tackle the menace
before it worsened to its current state, but the President shunned
its advice.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, elder statesman said the
national conference would not solve the problem adding:
“Is someone organizing this disagreement so that Northerners
will kill themselves? They are trying to divide Nigeria for political
reason. But this is bad politics” , he said.
Onongo said there is so much impunity going on in Nigeria, stressing
that, unfortunately, some people in government do not like the truth
being told.
Speaking on the Boko Haram crisis, he said: “When the crisis
began, we brought a bunch of suggestions on how to go about
it. Then, we gave him the example of former President Yar’Adua
whom he took over from. When Yar’Adua came as president, we
had a similar problem in Mr President’s place. Mr President
himself was used to go down to his people to talk to them and he
managed to get them… We told Mr President right from the onset
to take whatever action you can take to bring this thing under
control. But the manner in which it was done became
unfortunate. It could have been done by just offering them
amnesty. But some people now brought religion and ethnicity
into it”.