Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said the Boko Haram menace cannot be solved using the current tactics in place.
He opined that the government is reacting to the symptoms and not exactly treating the malaise.
Speaking to the BBC in Lagos, the former president said the insurgency is a product of gross underdevelopment of the region, unemployment and youth frustration. If these root causes are not solved, the insurgents would keep going on.
According to him, another contributing factor to the growth of the Boko Haram was the attitude of then President Goodluck Jonathan to news of the rise of the Boko Haram.
Obasanjo said Jonathan was of the belief that the Boko Haram was a construct of the North created to derail his 2015 presidential ambitions.
He said: “I went out in 2011 to Maiduguri. I took great risk to find out what is really happening about Boko Haram, do they have grievances, if they have grievances, what are their grievances and I brought all that to Jonathan.
“Jonathan didn’t believe that Boko Haram was a serious issue. He thought that it was a device by the North to prevent him from continuing as president of Nigeria which was rather unfortunate.
“Boko Haram will not be over; it started from a position of gross under-development, unemployment, youth frustration in the north-east. So we must be treating the disease, not the symptom.”
