Babagana Zulum, Borno State Governor, on Friday, raised the alarm over the regrouping of Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists in the Tumbus areas of Lake Chad and the Mandara Hills within the Sambisa Forest in the state.
Zulum spoke in Maiduguri when the Minister of Defence, Badaru Abubakar, Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Christopher Musa, and other senior military commanders paid him a visit.
He lamented that the terrorists groups are getting support internationally, adding that they were freely breeding in Tumbus water areas on the Lake Chad without much effort by the military to displace them.
Zulum said, “What we are facing now is, we do military exercises/operations, and after some time, we disengage. The Boko Haram and ISWAP members will again come and take over those areas that were hitherto regained.
“There was never a time since the insurgency started that operations were conducted on the shores of the Tumbus in the Lake Chad. And, it has been a breeding ground for the insurgents. They can get money, livelihoods, and everything in that water.
“So, there is a need for us to see how military operations should be conducted in the waterway because all the terrorists that are operating in the Northwest, North Central, Northeast will return to the Sahel and Tumbus in the Lake Chad for their livelihoods. This is something that needs to be done.
“ISWAP and Boko Haram are terrorists getting support internationally, and looking at our porous borders remain infiltrated through the Sahel, which is our major problem.”
This is coming less than a week after a security analyst, Bulama Bukarti a senior fellow of the Extremism Policy Unit at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, cautioned that the activities of the dreaded terrorist group, .
The revelation followed closely after Senator Ali Ndume of the Borno South District revealed that about 100 soldiers and 280 civilians were killed by Boko Haram within the time frame of six months.
