Governors of the embattled States of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe have insisted that elections must be held in their states come February 2015.
Governors of the north-eastern states pressed the demand at an emergency expanded security meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday.
According to sources close to the presidency, the main purpose of convening the meeting was to find a final solution to the terrorism in that part of the country. The meeting was also attended by security chiefs and relevant ministers, including Chief of Defence Staff, Alex Badeh.
All delegates who spoke with journalists at the end of the meeting all hinted that elections would hold in the three states where emergency rule is currently holding sway. They also revealed that the deployment of more troops to the embattled states ahead of the elections formed part of discussion at the meeting.
They held that if elections could be held recently in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-torn places, then the feat can also be achieved in the Boko Haram strongholds in the country.
“We have come to brief the President on the security features of our various states, we have come to greet him and we told him of the challenges we have been facing,” Yobe State Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam told newsmen after the meeting.
“We are appealing to the Federal Government to deploy more troops in addition to what we have on ground to arrest the situation in our various states. We need more troops, the troops that we have on ground in our various states are not enough to contain the situation, so we have appealed to the Federal Government to deploy additional troops with full equipment to tame the situation.
“Elections will hold in the states. Election will hold, that is the position of the electoral commission and definitely in all those areas where insurgency exists, elections will hold.”
On his part, Badeh assured that the military would soon overcome the insurgents at all cost.
“It will be difficult to close the border between Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Nigeria due to the length of the area,” he said, emphasising that more collaboration with the security agencies of the border nations should be explored rather than border closure.
Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima maintained that elections must hold in the affected states to send a strong signal to the insurgents. He said by not holding elections in the states, the government would be seen to have given in to the antics of the sect.
Shettima suggested that the elections could be conducted in Internally Displaced Person’s camps.
Political pundits had earlier expressed doubts at the possibility of having an election in the three states by 2015 because of the insecurity issues and the consequent declaration of emergency rule there.
On 14th May 2013, the president had declared a six-month state of emergency in the three states and renewed it twice because the Boko Haram terrorists were not subdued throughout the whole time. Jonathan’s attempt to renew the emergency rule for a third time in November 2014 met stiff opposition from the National Assembly.
