Governors of the North-East states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe rose from an emergency expanded security meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday, insisting that elections must hold in their states next month.
There have been fears in many quarters that general elections may not hold next month in the three states that are considered to be the hotbeds of the Boko Haram sect.
Jonathan had on May 14, 2013 declared a six-month state of emergency in the three states and renewed it twice at the peak of the sect’s activities.
His attempt to further renew the emergency rule in November 2014 was rejected by the National Assembly.
At the end of the Tuesday meeting also attended by security chiefs and relevant ministers, the governor’s were of the view that if elections could be held recently in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war-torn places, that of the North East part of the country could not be an exception.
Yobe State Governor, Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam, told State House correspondents that the governor’s told the President to deploy more troops ahead of the general elections.
Geidam said the troops on ground in the affected states were not enough to handle the security situation.
The governor said, “We have come to brief the President on the security features of our various states, we have come to greet him and we told him of the challenges we have been facing.
“We are appealing to the Federal Government to deploy more troops in addition to what we have on ground to arrest the situation in our various states.
“We need more troops, the troops that we have on ground in our various states are not enough to contain the situation, so we have appealed to the Federal Government to deploy additional troops with full equipment to tame the situation.
“Elections will hold in the states. Election will hold, that is the position of the electoral commission and definitely in all those areas where insurgency exists, elections will hold.”
Borno State Governor, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, on his part said elections must hold in the affected states to send a strong signal to the insurgents.
He said by not holding elections in the states, the government would be seen to have given in to the antics of the sect.
The governor argued that elections could be conducted in Internally Displaced Person’s camps. Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
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