Nigeria at war – Defence Minister

With the latest siege posed by early Monday’s Boko Haram attack on the Nigerian Air Force Base in Maiduguri, Supervising Minister of Defence, Labaran Maku, declared in Abuja on Tuesday that Nigeria is in a state of war, fighting enemies that do not wear uniform.

He said such enemies could be identified as the musketeer.

Speaking at a press conference on the activities lined up for 2014 Armed Forces Remembrance Day celebrations (AFRDC), Maku said the Defence Headquarters in Abuja has despatched a team of senior military officers to the Borno State capital with a mandate to assess the extent of damage caused by the insurgents’ bomb attack on the Air Force Base in the town that claimed several lives and left three military helicopters damaged.

He disclosed that the military has intensified recruitment and training in order to confront the insurgency to its logical conclusion.

The minister expressed joy that from situation reports received so far, most of the insurgents that came for the attack did not go back.

He urged the military to remain focused because insurgency is a guerrilla warfare with foreign collaborators that the Federal Government has been trying to identify.

“As I am talking to you, the armed forces headquarters are in Maiduguri to give us details of what happened.”

Reacting to a statement credited to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Nigeria is fighting a civil war and not human right abuses, Maku described it as funny, asking the ICC to tell the world which part of Nigeria is fighting each other.

“They are terrorists with international network attacking peaceful people; they are terrorists and not civil war attacking peaceful people,” he said, adding that the whole nation was behind the armed forces in dealing with the insurgency.