By Evelyn Usman
As the Military celebrates the capture of Sambisa forest and take over of Boko Haram headquarters in Bornu state, Security expert has advised the military not to conclude that the fight against Terrorism is over.

President of the Association of Industrial Security and Safety Operators of Nigeria, Dr. Ona Ekhomu, who gave the admonition yesterday in Lagos, stated that rather, the federal government and the military should be at alert for the next 12 months, with a view to nipping any likely resumption of violence by the sect in the bud.

He said “ We shouldn’t think that it is over with Boko Haram. We shouldn’t think that they have been defeated and they are no longer a threat. That would be a big mistake.

They are committed jihadists and extremists and will only hide as a survival mechanism, and strike when the opportunity presents itself.

“Boko Haramism is based on Salafist jihadist ideology. So, in addition to battle-field defeat, their perverted strict wahabbi ideology must be defeated before the war can be deemed to be over. If not, the conflict continues”, he said.

Based on the displacement theory of crime, Ekhomu said that the senior leadership personnel of BH were likely to have migrated to safer areas across the Nigerian borders, while the field commanders could have gone into hiding in Kano, Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Enugu, a position he said was supported by the arrest f a Boko Haram commander by the Military in Lagos , last week.

Continuing, he said : “BH terrorists do not wear uniforms and they look like everyone else in the general population. So, it is easy for their foot soldiers to escape far from the northeast in search of refuge in the south or elsewhere. My fear is that with leadership, these guys can regroup quickly and resume their campaign of violence.

We have seen this before in 2009 to 2010 when the sect pretended that it had been defeated by General Saleh Maina, in Maiduguri only to resume violence in September 2010 by breaking out over 700 inmates from Maiduguri Prisons.”

He therefore, urged the intelligence services to work hard to uncover terror plots in order to save the lives of Nigerians. He urged the Police to also be alert to the presence of criminals and terrorists in their jurisdictions.

He also called for the adoption of criminal profiling and aggressive community oriented policing strategies that would identify terrorists in the communities.

Applauding efforts of the federal government and the Military on the capture of the Sambisa forest, Ekhomu described the feat as a significant achievement in the fight against terrorism. But he was however quick to call on the the need for the Nigerian Immigration Service to secure the nation’s borders , with a view to preventing free movement of terrorists in and out of Nigeria.