From Okwe Obi, Abuja

Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Abubakar Ibn Umar El-Kanemi, has accused foreigners who came into Nigeria to acquire Quranic education, of being behind Boko Haram insurgency.

The monarch made the assertion yesterday at a town hall meeting and award ceremony, organised by Yateem Faqeer Global Foundation in Abuja.  He lamented that residents in the region had suffered severely in the hands of the insurgents.

But he hailed the Federal Government for the successes recorded so far in the fight against terrorism, adding that the authorities have reclaimed 17 local government areas in Borno which were hitherto under the control of bandits before President Muhammadu Buhari took over power in 2015.

He stated: “Borno has witnessed so many things, both good and bad. Boko Haram is something meaningless, mindless and without any sense of direction as none of the Holy Books, either Quran or the Bible indicates that you show disrespect to others, burn and destroy their properties.

“And I want people to know that Boko Haram was never initiated or started by people of the North-East Zone. It is something they just brought to us from nowhere. Boko Haram insurgents came to Borno and the North-East in the guise of acquiring Quranic education while not many knew they had an ideology which was polluted as well as promoted into the minds of the youths, and created havoc in our area.

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“Our airport had been vandalised. We were not receiving visitors; no commercial flights, no roads. The only road we had was Maiduguri – Kano road as all other roads were besieged and taken over by Boko Haram.  At that time, Maiduguri was hosting over two million people as IDPs and majority of them were women and children suffering very seriously

Honestly, we have suffered; the people have suffered. The palaces of our Emirs were destroyed; some of them were killed including other traditional rulers, religious leaders and district heads, and so many other people were killed.

“When these things started, we were telling people that something had to be done otherwise it will escalate to the other part of the country; they thought it was only a Borno affair. But look at it critically; everywhere today there is the problem of kidnappings, pipeline vandalism, cultism, communal clashes, and cattle rustling. So, the only permanent solution to this problem is prayer and provision of useful and credible intelligence to the security agencies.”

Also, a former Chief of Army Staff, General Alwali Kazir (rtd) dismissed insinuations that the bandits and other armed criminal gangs operating in the Northwest and other parts of the country were the offshoots of Boko Haram insurgents in the Northeast.

The Chairperson of Yateem Faqeer Global Foundation, Hajiya Yagana Abba Hassan, said that the mission of the humanitarian organisation was to serve humanity and to provide sustainable economic assistance to communities affected by insecurity, to help them fight extreme poverty amongst other challenges. She said: “The foundation seeks to build a working relationship with partners, stakeholders, and governments at all levels through friendly handshakes and open discussions of global challenges.”