Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has accused ex-President Goodluck Jonathan of failing to nip the insurgency in the North-East region in the bud early when he was in power because he believed Boko Haram was a device by the North to remove him from office.
Mr. Obasanjo said this while responding to questions during an interview session with Nkem Ifejika on BBC.
The former president stated that had Jonathan tackled the insurgency as early as 2011, it would not have assumed the scale it is today.
Obasanjo said: “We did not do what we should have done when we should have done it. We left it to become a very intractable problem.
“I went out in 2011 to Maiduguri. I took great risk to find out what is really happening. Boko haram, do they have grievances, if they have grievances, what are their grievances and I brought all that to Jonathan.
“Jonathan didn’t believe that Boko Haram was a serious issue. He thought that it was a device by the North to prevent him from continuing as president of Nigeria which was rather unfortunate.
“Boko Haram will not be over. It started from a position of gross under-development, unemployment, youth frustration in the north-east. So we must be treating the disease not the symptom.”
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