Nothern Elders Say They Tried To Help Jonathan In Fighting Terrorism

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”.

Source: Legit.ng