We’ll liberate Gwoza by Friday, says Jonathan

 President Goodluck Jonathan

President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday expressed the confidence that Nigerian troops will liberate Gwoza from members of the Boko Haram sect latest on Friday.

Once that feat is achieved, he said it would not take the nation more than one week to clean up.

Jonathan spoke while granting audience to a group of international election monitors who paid him a visit at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

“We believe by tomorrow (Thursday) or latest Friday, we will be able to take over Gwoza. If we take over Gwoza it will not take us more than one week to clean up. Now Boko Haram is not in position to come out and disrupt elections,” Jonathan told his guests.

He recalled that when security operatives advised that elections be rescheduled for security reasons, a number of people thought it was just because of the terror attacks in some parts of the North.

He however admitted that that was a major factor too because the Boko Haram set was in three states: Borno, Yobe and Adamawa at that time.

“They were holding territories, some local governments were completely under their control and invariably there were no government in those places.

“And of course, some states like Gombe and Bauchi were also not free. In fact, it would have been difficult to conduct elections in five states of the federation.

“If we had conducted elections on that February 14, they would have come up to disrupt elections in these five states and that would have made the presidential elections in these five states inconclusive.

“This is because whoever emerged a winner though we are 14 candidates but the PDP and the APC candidates are the two that are well known.

“It would have been difficult because probably the vote difference of any of these candidates, if you aggregate the remaining five states that elections would have been disrupted, it would have been difficult to declare a winner.”

Jonathan added that Gombe State was attacked on the same day the presidential election was earlier scheduled to hold. He said the aim of the insurgents was to disrupt the elections but they were repelled.

The President assured his guests that elections would be conducted on the Saturday across the country and there would be no reason for inclusive results.