Soldiers are cowards, says Boko Haram

Boko Haram hurled some verbal missiles at the military task force yesterday. It described soldiers deployed to keep the place in Maiduguri, as cowards.
The group vowed to attack the army and warned Army chief Gen. Azubike Ihejirika, saying he should ask Inspector-General of Police Hafiz Ringim what happened after he boasted that he would defeat Boko Haram.
The group accused the Joint Task Force (JTF) of carrying out massacre and destruction of innocent people’s property.

Borno elders also yesterday called for the immediate withdrawal of the soldiers from Maiduguri. It accused them of terrorising the people and committing rape. They said well-trained policemen should be deployed as replacement.
But in Abuja, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) endorsed the military action against Boko Haram.
Members of the Jamaátu Ahlis- Sunnah-Lil-daáwatti wal jihad (otherwise known as Boko Haram), in a statement signed by Abu Zaid and circulated to newspapers in Maiduguri yesterday, accused soldiers of hiding behind women and children.
They said this move portrays the soldiers as weak, vulnerable and confused. They challenged the army to relocate to their barracks, remove their families, and wait to see whether they would not be attacked.
Zaid said: “If you have the capacity to fight us, return to your barracks, remove your children and wives and see if we will not confront you within hours.”
In the statement written in Hausa and Arabic, Abu Zaid alleged that the recent attack on the innocent and destruction of their property is a sign that “you are weak, ungodly and fearful”. He criticised a statement credited to the Chief of Army Staff that Boko Haram are cowards.
“We want to tell the Chief of Army Staff, General Ihejerika, that cowards don’t engage a military in a duel as we did in your barracks and on the streets of Maiduguri. But cowards are those who attack women, children in their sleep and who burn the innocent property,” the statement said.
Zaid said attacks on military barracks would continue to prove Boko Haram’s capacity to the army chief. culled from the Nation