Shekau Will Be Arrested before Election Day - Jonathan

The President of Nigeria has stated his belief that the leader of the Boko Haram insurgents, Abubakar Shekau, will be caught by the government before the election starting March 28.

He said this while speaking with ThisDay on Friday.

He said: ”God willing we will catch Shekau before the elections.”

The Boko Haram leader himself has been the 'victim' of several deaths, all of which have turned out to be hoaxes, the latest being in September 2014.

The president also admitted that given that Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, its military strength wasn't commensurate with that position.
“Concerning the military strength being not at par to that of Nigeria’s economic development, there are some countries that don’t have powerful military,” he said.

“I don’t think Switzerland has a very powerful military. There are some countries that were even doing away with their military until this issue of terror, and now some of them are reconsidering.

“What happened in Nigeria is that after the civil war we had no reasons to buy sophisticated weapons. Since after the civil war, all what we have been doing is peace keeping, apart from stabilising Liberia and Sierra Leone, where our soldiers really fought war to stabilise those countries.

“Back home, we were at peace with our neighbours. It is now that we are witnessing Boko Haram that we see that fighting them is not what we do with AK 47, and now we have to look for money. I totally agree with you, if Brazil can manufacture commercial helicopter, what stops us from going into manufacturing.”

“Recently, we wanted to buy tear-gas from a country and they were bragging and saying that Nigeria has human rights abuse issues. I kept wondering what is tear-gas? I vowed that God willing if I return, Nigeria must produce tear-gas.

“What is the technology of producing tear-gas for God’s sake? What is the technology of producing APCs and armoured tanks? I agree with you that in terms of manufacturing, we must and we have no choice than to get into it as a nation. That is why we are emphasising about local content in production; that you can witness in the automobile industry which has come back.”


“Just last week a company that bought over the machine tools in Osogbo came to show the bullet proof vest that they produced and I asked them, can’t you produce weapons and they claimed that they can manufacture weapons if they could be patronised and there is a guarantor.

“Yes we have our own DICON, but DICON alone cannot produce all our weaponry. We must have more than two, three companies in a big country like Nigeria.

“I told the company that immediately after the elections, if I’ll be here for the next four years, before they start going for weapons, all the tear-gas that we’ll use in Nigeria, will have to be produced in Nigeria.”