Clifford Ndujihe

GIVING the dangerous dimension the Boko Haram insurgency with the insurgents declaring some parts of the country ‘Caliphate Republic’, the Igbo Leaders of Thought (ILT) have urged the Federal Government to use iron hand to check the problem.

Urging urgent and decisive action, the ILT feared little or nothing will be gained unless the President agrees to use the needed force and northern leaders desist from using the insurgency as ploy to stop President Goodluck Jonathan’s re-election bid.

The ILT, in a statement titled: “Evil times have finally arrived,” by its Deputy General Secretary, Evangelist Elliot Uko, said: “Now that Boko Haram has sacked a police station and two communities in the North-East and successfully hoisted their flags, it has become clear to all that the ISIS expansion in Iraq is about to be replicated here, if the Federal Government does not wake up to the reality that evil times have finally arrived in Nigeria.

“It is a pity we have a president who does not want to be blackmailed that he uses excessive force. He told us he is not a lion and has watched this sustained madness for more than two years now with only limited successes on the part of the Armed forces.

“How come Northern leaders who inspired it are all pretending Boko Haram fell from the sky? How come regional champions only use the Boko Haram madness as a political weapon to indict the Federal Government while no one is bothered that Nigeria has joined Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq etc as potential failed states?