The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai on Tuesday said the decision to swap Boko Haram prisoners with Chibok girls was not a military decision.
Buratai said this in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation’s programme, Hard Talk, aired on Tuesday.
He said the Federal Government saw the swap deal as the best decision at the time.
“Personally, I think it has its own advantages; the message is to rescue the Chibok girls.
“I do not think anyone has said the Boko Haram has been eliminated. Terrorism is something that is resilient.”
Buratai noted that the inability of the Boko Haram insurgents to attack the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, and other northern states as they did before May 2015, showed they had been defeated.
“Before May 2015, the Boko Haram insurgents were even in Abuja, Kano and Kaduna. They were operating even to the South. We had to stop them. For the past one and a half years, we have not had any attack in Jos, Abuja, Kano and many other places, not even as close as Gombe State.
“They are only concentrated within certain areas in Borno and Yobe states,” Buratai added.
Leave a reply