President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 stated his belief that Gwoza town in Borno State, which is currently under the control of Boko Haram insurgents will be liberated by Nigerian troops by Friday, March 27, 2015.
President Jonathan made this known at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, where he played host to a group of international election monitors.
He said: “We believe by tomorrow (Thursday) or latest Friday, we will be able to take over Gwoza. If we take over Gwoza it will not take us more than one week to clean up. Now Boko Haram is not in position to come out and disrupt elections.”
President Jonathan also told his guest that when the elections were rescheduled from the earlier dates because of security reasons a number of people failed to realize that the insurgents had strongholds in three states – Borno, Adamawa and Yobe.
He said: “They were holding territories, some local governments were completely under their control and invariably there were no government in those places.
“And of course, some states like Gombe and Bauchi were also not free. In fact, it would have been difficult to conduct elections in five states of the federation.
“If we had conducted elections on that February 14, they would have come up to disrupt elections in these five states and that would have made the presidential elections in these five states inconclusive.
“This is because whoever emerged a winner though we are 14 candidates but the PDP and the APC candidates are the two that are well known. It would have been difficult because probably the vote difference of any of these candidates, if you aggregate the remaining five states that elections would have been disrupted, it would have been difficult to declare a winner.”
