By Onozure Dania

LAGOS—President of  Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, Mr. Peter Esele, yesterday, said former President, Olusegun Obasanjo should be appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan to lead the negotiation with extremist Islamist group, Boko Haram.

Obasanjo in a CNN interview on Tuesday, had said that the President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration had not been reaching out enough to Boko Haram, and canvassed what he described as a “carrot-and-stick” way to address the sect’s menace.

He said President Jonathan had been applying less of dialogue and more of force in solving the Boko Haram issue.

“To deal with a group like that, you need a carrot and stick. The carrot is finding out how to reach out to them. When you try to reach out to them and they are not amenable to being reached out to, then you have to use the stick,” the ex-President had said.