“Once I come to Maiduguri, I feel safer than in Abuja. Because (in Abuja) somebody can knock down your door with a gun. In Maiduguri, we don’t hear of that,” said Chairman of the Senate Committee on Army, Ali Ndume, amid the ravaging of Borno by Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorists. 

Mr Ndume told Channels TV that the terrorists only operated outside Maiduguri.

Although Borno has come under vicious terrorist attacks killing thousands, destroying property, and displacing people, there have also been concerns about insecurity in Abuja.

According to Mr Ndume, who said the government could not wipe out crimes totally in every society, the Boko Haram insurgents operate outside and not within Maiduguri.

“It is outside Maiduguri where the insurgents are marauding around and attack intermittently. And that’s normal with insurgents. That’s why they are called insurgents. They do hit and run on soft targets,” he said.

The senator added, “In every society, you can’t wipe out criminality completely. In America, there is school shooting. Our own is that we have known terrorists, and the army is fighting them.”

Mr Ndume, who has called for more funding for the army, further expressed optimism that “with the new budget, things will soon change.”

Last May, Peoples Gazette reported that armed men suspected to be robbers invaded the residences of two senior aides to President Muhammadu Buhari inside the precinct of the Presidential Villa.

Administration officials and security sources told The Gazette that the incident, which occurred on May 9, prompted Ibrahim Gambari and Abubakar Maikano, the chief of staff and admin officer, respectively, to abandon their residences sources said. 

“Their houses were robbed, and the robbers packed money and other valuable assets from both houses,” an aide to the president informed about the robbery told this platform.