– Nigerians Positively Disposed to President’s Declaration
LARGE contingents of military personnel have begun to move into major cities
of the states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states in northeast Nigeria after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the states on Tuesday evening.
Wary residents and eyewitnesses in the city of Yola, capital of Adamawa, and Maiduguri, capital city of Borno, say they saw a heavy influx of soldiers rapidly moving into the cities earlier on Wednesday.
President Jonathan moved to announce the declaration of a state of emergency in a Tuesday evening address to the nation, saying his government will no longer tolerate the “rebellion” against state authority by the bloodthirsty extremist group, Boko Haram.
The president said that his administration had made wide consultations and sought different kinds of approach to the group’s insurgency with little success, hence the emergency option to put a final solution to the excesses of the group.
According to Mr. Jonathan, “there is a systematic effort by insurgents and terrorists to destabilize the Nigerian state and test our collective resolve.”
“We will hunt them down, we will fish them out, and we will bring them to justice,” Jonathan said in his Tuesday evening address.
He added that troops would be immediately deployed in the states where emergency has been declared, with orders to take “all necessary action, within the ambit of their rules of engagement, to put an end to the impunity of insurgents and terrorists.”
The movement of soldiers into the cities and towns of the states affected by the emergency declaration on the morning after Jonathan’s televised address is the most glaring implication yet of the declaration.
Reports from the major cities of the affected states reveal a tense atmosphere, with shops and businesses closed and residents staying off the streets.
Opposition to the emergency declaration in general has so far been muted, perhaps because democratic institutions in the affected states have not been scrapped as it was done in previous emergency declarations in Nigeria.
“Governors and other political office holders in the affected states will continue to discharge their constitutional responsibilities,” Mr. Jonathan had stated on Tuesday.