‘It’ll Be A National Disgrace If Shekau Is Truly Alive’

The Director of Advanced Centre for Sustainable Development, Dr. Bode Olaonipekun, has declared that it would be a slight on the nation and the military if the dreaded leader of the Boko Haram sect, Imam Abubakar Shekau is still alive.

Shekau had reemerged from a long hiatus to declare that contrary to the claims by the Nigerian military some few weeks ago that he may have died from gunshot injuries when Special Forces with support from the Nigeria Air Force raided the sect’s hideout in Borno State, he was alive and prepared to carry out even more deadlier attacks.

In a recently released video on Wednesday, Shekau, who was surrounded by masked members of his terrorist sect, vowed to continue in his mission of seeing to the establishment of Shariah law in place of democracy.

However, Olaonipekun, who was speaking with journalists in Abuja on Thursday, chided the military for being too eager to disclose Shekau’s death when it hadn’t recover his dead body or had enough evidence to show that the terrorist leader was indeed dead.

He said: “The Federal Government has not done too badly in the fight, but I will quickly add that not too well. There are two aspects to this issue of terrorism, from my own point of view. Firstly, I think our attitude of talking too much is taking its toll on the issue of security. Before anything happens everybody is talking, the security chiefs are talking, the special advisers to the government are talking, meanwhile these are issues that should be regarded as security information.

“Handling security information is not just saying everything, because when you give all the information to your enemy, the battle is as good as lost. They might have the strategies they are reserving, but giving hasty or too much information might not help matters and now if not a disgrace to us as a nation, with all apologies to the security operatives it might be a disgrace to them on the long run if truly Shekau is alive.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Army Spokesman, Brigadier General Ibrahim Attahiru, has stated that the military authorities are authenticating the veracity of the latest video purportedly by Shekau and as such cannot respond appropriately to its contents.

“We cannot say at this juncture whether the claim is true or false until we authenticate the veracity of the video,” Attahiru was reported as saying.

“The army authorities have to verify the claim. This is precisely what we are doing,” he maintained.