By Demi Adeniyi
Former Commander Joint Military Commander of Operation Safe Haven Maj.-Gen. Henry Ayoola (rtd) has thrown his weight behind the December deadline given the Nigeria Armed Forces by the Federal Government.
He said the deadline, which was announced by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, who was in company with the Minister of Defence, and the Minister of Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed Gen Ayoola said the deadline have the capacity to stimulate officers and men of the Armed Forces towards ensuring the immediate end to the war against terrorism and insurgency in the country.
He said the new found confidence of the Federal Government must be coming from reports of successes of the service chiefs and the assurances that the war is on the verge of being won by the country.
Speaking during the Morning Show on a popular Lagos based television station, Ayoola said; “It is a good thing coming from the Federal Government especially with the extra-ordinary collection of ministers who jointly addressed the nation to serve the deadline on the completion on the awr against terrorism in Nigeria. It is good to have a deadline given but hardly had there been anyone who could predict the end of any war, the same reason why we have battled with all the changing faces of this war for over 20 years.”
He said the new enthusiasm demonstrated by the Federal Government have been assured by the war commanders of their successes in the various theatres of the war.
He observed that a change in the narrative began to show since the aftermath of the killing of men of the Brigade of Guards when the President and Commander-in-Chief Muhammadu Buhari, declared that the service chiefs now have “full freedom” to put an end to the insurgency in the country.
Ayoola further noted that since that declaration, the Armed Forces have been recording series of successes from land and air bombardments and the piling of pressures on these terrorists has started bearing fruits in the large numbers of terrorists both Boko Haram and ISWAP who were either killed or are voluntarily surrendering especially in the Northeast.
He however wanted the total end on the war to include even war on banditry, in the Northwest, where a lot of successes are equally being recorded by the nation’s armed forces.
“The order to put this out by December must be holistic. We must ensure that it goes beyond just the terrorists, but also in the various faces to which these have been manifesting in Nigeria such that we put an end to the asymmetric war that has taken so much toll on the nation’s military defence resources.
Ayoola who pointed attention to the series of works that had been done on the nation’s longest war since after the Civil War, said “perhaps time has come for the service chiefs to go back to the drawing board and bring all these documented works back and see which ones they could implement of the various documented solutions within the prism of the new found freedom they now have to prosecute this war and bring it to a conclusive end by December, this year.
