Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State says the current state of insecurity in the country could have been worse than what it is if not the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said this Tuesday while fielding questions from State House reporters after a closed door meeting with the President.
When asked about the motive behind his visit to the President, he said: “I’ve just finished a meeting with the President. And this meeting turned out to be one of my most enthusiastic meetings ever. Well, let me first acknowledge the depth of knowledge and the depth of the intellect that the President exudes.
“His master hand understanding of the international and global security challenges and dovetailing into the Nigerian situation. And what he has done to be able to stem the continuous incursion of bandits and Boko Haram into Nigeria.
“This country would have been in a worse situation but President Muhammadu Buhari given the fall of Afghanistan, given the massive movement of people who have a feeling that the West African province belongs to them by birth, and therefore Muslims of West African origin, and Christians, in their opinion, are infidels and therefore must be wiped out. The President did thoroughly tutored on the subject of global security. And I think it will be child’s play for anybody to misunderstand the enormity of the security challenges of this nation.
“If President Muhammadu Buhari was not the president, perhaps things could have been worse. I say this with all amount of confidence, because I do recall when we use to have bombings even right here in the city of Abuja. The flags that used to adorn most of our northern states as Boko Haram enclaves have all been brought down. This does not stop occasional incidents of attack here and there. Guerrilla war takes 30 to 40 years to end. The Algeria experience is too recent for us to remember.”
On what he would do differently having shown interest to succeed President Buhari, Ayade said: “So, what am I going to do differently? My priority is to support President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to focus on security.
“Indeed, the collapse of Afghanistan puts a major threat on national security and put in fact far more pressure on Northern Nigeria with an intent by ISWAP to ensure that they conquer West African province.
“So, priority number one is security. And security will be security, which is based on a digital approach to dealing with issues of security. Indeed, wherever you have a challenge in Nigeria, and you put in money, the problem gets bigger. So, we realize that a non-contact intellectual, digital security approach, using sophisticated international partnership to deal with intelligence gathering, and focusing on the fundamental root causes of this criminality, banditry, kidnapping, and more importantly, terrorism.
“The facts are traceable to two major crisis, Boko Haram and ISWAP conflicting in each other, one having its link to Al Qaeda, Boko Haram. And ISIS, having a direct relationship with the other group, ISWAP. So, because they have two fundamental sources, where they are at war with each other, it is easy for you to understand the nexus of the security challenge and deal with it and understanding the source of all those young men in their thousands that are coming to Nigeria on bikes, trace them to their roots. And I’m willing to take security as a national issue for full discussion I’m the cause of time.”
