By Publisher
Jimoh Ibrahim, Ondo South Senator, has deplored Nigeria’s strategies in the fight against insurgency.
Speaking during plenary on Wednesday, a motion sponsored by Senator Ali Ndume, Borno South on the suicide attacks in Gwoza, Borno State, which resulted in the deaths of 36 people, Ibrahim posited that living with insecurity could not be the only way to understand security.
He tasked the military on the deployment of non-conventional strategies to fight the war against insecurity since Boko Haram is also non-conventional.
According to the lawmaker, a lot could be achieved with technology, adding that it had enabled him to identify over 277 guns and other assorted weapons in the proximity of the National Assembly.
“We cannot allow this trend to continue because of the danger that it portrays. I don’t want to take much of your time, Mr President, but I will say clearly that it costs nothing for the Army to get devices in their phones to know where these notorious criminals live,” he said.
“As I’m here, I check my phone regularly and I know the number of guns that are very close to me here. This is just less than 1,000 installations. Within us now, there are over 277 guns around here.
“So what am I saying? We can use technology, just like Senator Ndume has said, it is rather you deploy technology.”
Responding to a joke by the Senate President Godswill Akpabio, on whether he could also decipher how many of the guns had bullets in them, Ibrahim said: “Mr Senate President, we can actually do a probability. If you have 277 guns close to you, with a radius of one kilometer, the probability that half of them have guns is one. And that is dangerous.
“I will need to find out the source of those guns. But because I can locate that there are more close to us and very close to Villa, then I understand we are safe. I want to say very clearly that the military should stop using conventional strategies to fight the insurgency in Nigeria.
“There’s a distinction between conventional strategy and non-conventional strategy. We need to go to non-conventional strategy to fight unconventional war.
“Boko Haram is an unconventional war. It’s not a conventional war. We’re all aware of what happened in Kenya. We cannot close our eyes. We need to wake up. So I finally suggest to you, Mr Senate President, and my distinguished colleagues, that this Senate, under your leadership, sir, must have a closed-door meeting for one day and let’s use the whole day to discuss security matters.
“Our life is very important. The life of man cannot be said to be short, brutish, and unproductive if we do nothing about insecurity. Living with insecurity cannot be the only way to understand security.”
