TheCable

John Oyegun, the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), says his party would engage members of Boko Haram differently if in power, knowing that the insurgents are not guerilla soldiers and their fighting strategy is conventional.

Oyegun, who was speaking on the recent terrorist attacks at Mubi, flayed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government for the worsening security situation in the country.

He also lampooned the PDP-led government for claiming to know the sponsors of Boko Haram without revealing them.

“A few days ago, the omnipotent of Akwa Ibom state pronounced that they were not going to handover to sponsors of Boko Haram,” he said.

“Simple, the PDP know who the sponsors of Boko Haram are. So why are they not tackling them? What is stopping them from arraigning them before a court of law?”

Oyegun added that the APC would offer better alternatives to solving the insecurity problem when it comes to power in 2015.

“It is a conventional warfare. These people are not guerrillas. They move in armoured personal carriers some of which they seized from the military,” he said of Boko Haram.

Responding to TheCable’s question on what the party would do differently in tackling insecurity should it gain power in 2015, Oyegun said:

“Coming to what we will do differently, let me put it simplistically, our troops will not abandon Mubi. We will make the system work,” he said.

He reiterated the call of the party for the setting up an international panel of inquiry to look into Boko Haram and its campaign of bloodletting.

The national chairman of the APC also accused PDP of deliberately allowing the crisis to fester in the northeast for the sake of gaining electoral advantage in the 2015 general election.