Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has described as a dangerous development Monday’s suicide bomb attack on a mosque at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID).
He said the attack on the UNIMAID mosque was particularly worrisome, having come at a time when the terrorist group was clearly degraded.
“We cannot afford to be complacent now or in the future,” he also said in a statement released by his media office in Abuja.
The chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who condemned the attack, said the attack on UNIMAID was not just about a bomb exploding in a mosque, but that education in the northeast is under attack.
He said Nigeria had not experienced any such act of terrorism perpetrated within a school after the February 2014 attack on the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, in which 40 male students were murdered, as well as the April 2014 kidnapping of over 200 girls from their school dormitory in Chibok.
The Turakin Adamawa also stated that a lack of education was one of the most alarming threats to security in the northeast.
Many of the terrorists, he added, have been shown to be people who have either never had the chance or ability to read the Koran for themselves and interpret the tenets of Islam beyond the false teachings of their terrorist commanders.
“A sound education will provide our youth with the ability to analyse and make informed decisions, an opportunity that many young people in the northeast of Nigeria do not have at present, making it easy for false teachers to control them,” he also said.
Atiku, who condoled with the families of the deceased, students and staff of UNIMAID over the loss of lives, also prayed for the quick recovery of the injured.