Borno has overcome Boko Haram attacks – Commissioner

The Borno State government has said that it has successfully overcome the negative impact of the Boko Haram attacks and that this should be acknowledged and celebrated.

The state Commissioner for Information and Internal Security, Prof. Usman Tar, said this in Abuja at a two-day workshop on ‘Addressing Patterns of Violence, Injustice and Criminality in Nigeria’ organised by International Alert Nigeria and the Borno State Government.

He lamented that journalists and media organisations still made wrong reports about the development and must refrain from projecting the state based on past events but begin to report the true position of things.

“The media is still trapped in the old narrative of Borno being the home of insurgence, but all this has changed; our 27 local governments are fully controlled by the federal forces. There is freedom of movement, our transportation is booming, our agriculture is booming and everything is working.

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“This narrative needs to be carried by the media and that is what I mean by journalists not projecting the state in its true positions,” Tar said.

He said that Maiduguri, the state capital, was safe for habitation and every other business activity including journalism and that the state governor, Prof Babagana Umara Zulum’s assurance that journalists and media organisations have the freedom to enter any organisation for information without fear of being blocked or censored, should be explored.

Speaking earlier, the Country Director of International Alert Nigeria, Dr. Paul Nyulaku-Bemshima, said the event was to brainstorm and identify the major issues that Nigeria was grappling with about security and to find lasting solutions.

“The overriding objective of this meeting is that we identify key resolutions of what is going on in different regions of Nigeria. This is because working in silos is always very counterproductive, so it is always good to establish peer learning opportunities like this. Where we all together access the drivers of injustice insecurity, violence and injustice across the country,” Nyulaku-Bemshima said.

He said it was important to address these three factors that cut across the country and were bedevilling every region in order to provide solutions and achieve growth and development.

He recommended exit pathways such as amnesties, increase in access to justice in communities where rights have been violated; and other kinetic and non-kinetic actions and solutions.