By Brian Okoth
Nigerian Defence minister Barshi Magashi has said he is highly satisfied with the military’s efforts to secure the country during President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term.
While announcing a positive review in regard to the fight against insecurity, Magashi, who has been at the helm of Defence ministry for four years, said he would give the armed forces a score ranging between 70 and 80 per cent.
The minister made the remarks on Thursday during a celebratory dinner held in his honour at the Army Headquarters in Asokoro, Abuja.
“There is nothing that we have not done to keep this country together,” he said at the event attended by Defence Permanent Secretary Ibrahim Abubakar Kana.
“During this period, we achieved about 70 to 80 percent success and we will continue to do the same,” added Magashi, declaring they had managed to neutralise the perennial threat by Boko Haram.
Boko Haram is a militant group largely based in northern Nigeria that has frustrated the government’s security efforts since 2002.
Magashi said President Buhari gave the Defence ministry “all the necessary tools to enable us perform our duties credibly”.
“We should give credit to the outgoing Commander-in-Chief, President Muhammadu Buhari, for realising that there was a need for synergy among the armed forces and other security agencies,” he said.
Magashi's farewell dinner was held ahead of President Buhari's exit on Monday, May 29, when he will officially hand over power to his successor, Bola Tinubu.
The minister’s scorecard came nearly two months after the Nigerian military killed more than 40 people suspected to be members of Boko Haram.
The neutralisation occurred between March 23 and April 6, the Directorate of Defence Media Operations said.
Twenty-one of the suspected terrorists were killed in northeast Nigeria, 24 in the northwest and three in the southwest, the Defence department said.
Boko Haram’s worst attack on civilians occurred on January 28, 2019, when more than 60 people were killed at the border town of Rann in northeast Nigeria, according to the Amnesty International.
In mid-April 2014, the militants abducted 276 female students of a government secondary school at Chibok town in Borno State, Nigeria.
Some of the girls, aged between 16 and 18, are yet to be found.
