Troops will double up their engagements and counter-attacks on fleeing Boko Haram elements in the Chad Basin region, President Muhammadu Buhari assured Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum on Thursday.
The governor was at the State House to update the President on the security situation in his state.
Zulum said he hinted the President of the southwards movement of the terrorists after suffering heavy attacks from the military forces of Chad Republic in recent times.
According to him, President Buhari said that the needed support will be given to the troops to complete the decimation of the fleeing terrorists and ensure that they are unable to blend into communities in the area or find their way back to the Sambisa Reserve.
The governor said the state was already in a panic mode, seeing the fleeing terrorists had already starting finding their way back into different parts of the state, saying “honestly speaking, we are apprehensive because of the ongoing operations by the Chadians.
“Right now, most of the Boko Haram insurgents are fleeing the shores of Lake Chad, areas of Chad Republic and they are now coming into northern and southern Borno State. There’s need for us to now provide some counter-insurgency attacks.”
When asked what President Buhari’s response to the situation was, the governor said: “That this is the right time that the government of Nigeria, under his leadership, will do everything possible to support the JTF and others to be proactive enough to contain the situation, to deal with them decisively, with the view to ending the crisis, so that they shouldn’t occupy some other areas in the northern state, as well as in the Sambisa Reserve.”
On the level of preparedness of his administration to contain COVID-19 spread because of the nature of the humanitarian crisis the state had been managing over the years, he said appropriate steps were being taken.
His administration, he said, had already placed restrictions on movements despite the fact that the state was yet to record a COVID-19 case.
The governor added that the state already stopped the return of indigenes of the state, who reside abroad, in the meantime.
He said: “My deputy governor, who is the chairman of the Coronavirus Pandemic Committee, is doing very well. We have stopped vehicular movements into Maiduguri.
“We have stopped our indigenes coming from abroad from coming and if they must come, we are taking them straight to the isolation centres. We have huge numbers of IDP camps and we have taken some measures, including frequent checking.”
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