Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has claimed that the administration he served under, led by ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, decisively crushed Boko Haram when it first emerged in 2002.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday during a visit by stakeholders from Kogi East Senatorial District, led by former Kogi State Deputy Governor Simon Achuba, Atiku blamed the prolonged insurgency on what he described as the federal government’s failure to act with political will.
Atiku, who served as vice president between 1999 and 2007, said the sect’s first known activities surfaced in Yobe State in 2002.
He added that Obasanjo promptly convened a meeting with service chiefs and handed down a strict ultimatum to eliminate the threat.
“I was there when the President called the service chiefs and gave them a marching order,” Atiku recalled.
“We told them if they couldn’t contain the situation, they should take off their uniforms. Within a few weeks, Boko Haram was crushed. The sect didn’t resurface until we left office.”
He described the current security situation as a direct consequence of successive governments’ lack of urgency and seriousness.
“When your citizens are being killed daily, and you as a leader remain unbothered, it is the height of irresponsibility,” he said. “Our government lacks political will. That’s the truth.”
The former vice president also criticised Nigeria’s security architecture, saying the country remains under-policed despite a large population of unemployed graduates who could be absorbed into the police force.
Atiku urged his visitors—community leaders and political stakeholders from the region—to forge a united front against insecurity and what he termed as a non-performing government.
Boko Haram, founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002, began as a religious movement but turned deadly in 2009 following the extra-judicial killing of Yusuf by security operatives.
Since then, the insurgency has claimed thousands of lives, displaced millions, and destabilised the northeast.
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