LAGOS, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- The challenges of post-insurgency war in northeast Nigeria are huge, Minister of Defense Mansur Dan-Ali said Thursday.
The Nigerian minister spoke in Abuja, the nation's capital, when he declared open a round table organized by the Africa Media Round-table Initiative on insurgency in the North-East.
The defense official called on youths and civil society organizations to play their roles in ensuring sustainable unity and peace in the country.
He expressed happiness that NGOs were concerned with challenges in the nation, including security posed by the terrorists and other criminal elements.
While saying that the government was committed to peace, security and indivisibility of the country, he urged all Nigerians to refrain from acts that could breach security.
According to him, security is everybody's business.
Earlier, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said his ministry had embarked on public enlightenment in mobilizing Nigerians to support military effort in the North-East.
Mohammed said the war against the Boko Haram terrorists was not for the military alone and urged everyone to contribute their quota.
The minister commended the military, saying that in spite of inadequacies and challenges, they had achieved a great task which in time past people thought to be impossible.
The minister urged Nigerians not to see the Boko Haram insurgency as a religious war, but a group of people with evil and selfish agenda.
The Boko Haram insurgency has been blamed for more than 20,000 deaths and displacement of 2.3 million people since 2009.
Nigeria has made a considerable gain on the Boko Haram front, with its security forces operating in the restive region dislodging Boko Haram fighters from the Sambisa Forest, the group's largest training camp in the country, last December.
The security forces are intensifying aerial and ground patrol in the country's northeast, extending their offensive mission around the Green Belt Region near Niger and Chad.
