Boko Haram: We Accused them, Fought them, and now we beg them

GOVERNOR Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe State is worried over the increasing number of people fleeing   Damaturu, the state capital, following the precarious security in the state,  and, therefore, appealed to those still remaining to stay, even as he called on those who had left to come back home.

Only recently, specifically during and after the month of Ramadan, over 30 people were  shot dead by suspected terrorists in Damaturu.

Gaidam made the appeal  during a ‘special broadcast’ to the people of Yobe on the effort by the state government and other security agencies to contain the insecurity in the state, particularly in Damaturu and Potiskum.

The governor lamented, “In spite of my earlier clarion call and additional efforts by the security operatives to bring the situation under control, people have continued to panic and flee Damaturu in their thousands making the state capital look like a ghost town’.

He continued: “The fact that no real breach of the peace was witnessed during the Sallah festival and the days following it, in spite of rumours of an impending attack, has demonstrated that the rumours are as baseless and unfounded as the fears are imaginary and unrealistic. Circulation of such rumours could be the deliberate handiwork of miscreants through which they create a fertile environment to perpetrate their atrocities of plundering and looting of people’s properties in their absence as some reports have actually indicated.

Vanguard