A former Commandant of the Nigerian Army School of Infantry, Brig. Gen. Williams Obene (retd.) has said that terrorists are focused on discrediting Nigeria ahead of the World Economic Forum for Africa which is the first edition to ever take place in Nigeria.
He said, “The World Economic Forum summit that is going to hold in Abuja has attracted terrorists. Their aim is to discredit Nigeria, portraying it as unsafe to host the summit. Therefore, they are likely to continue attacking Abuja. I think they would still carry out more attacks, especially, on soft targets in and around Abuja in order to create fear and doubts about the ability of Nigeria to host the summit.
“It’s very likely that the insurgents will attack the Abuja city centre, unless security agents are on top of their game. The populace should also be security conscious wherever they are.”
Obene said the terrorists would not be able to penetrate high value targets due to heightened security and so would focus on soft targets like shopping complexes and marketplaces.
“The way international terrorism is now, you can’t say distance will make certain places immune to attacks; that is self-delusion. We must all know that Nigeria is at war with terrorism, whether that war has been officially declared by government or not.
“It’s an asymmetric war, where there are no boundaries or specific location of the enemy. The enemy is everywhere, anybody can be a suspect. It is the entire nation that is at war. The insurgents can attack anywhere in the country.”
Leave a Reply