Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has expressed hopes that all territory seized by Islamist militant group Boko Haram will be retaken within a month.
“They are getting weaker and weaker by the day,” he told the BBC.
He however admitted that the security forces had been slow to respond to the insurgents’ initial advance in north-east Nigeria.
Nigeria’s army has recently claimed a series of victories over the militants. The violence has killed more than 15,500 people since 2012.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC’s Will Ross in the capital Abuja, President Jonathan said: “I’m very hopeful that it will not take us more than a month to recover the old territories that hitherto have been in their [Boko Haram’s] hands.”
Earlier this week, the Nigerian military said the militants no longer controlled any urban centres in Yobe and Adamawa – two out of the three worst-affected states in the north-east.
The military also pledged that Borno state, the birthplace of Boko Haram, would soon be freed.
However, President Jonathan admitted in the interview that the authorities “never expected that they [Boko Haram] would build up that kind of capacity”.
He added: “We underestimated their external influence. Since after the civil war we’ve not fought any war, we don’t manufacture weapons, so we had to look for help to re-equip our army and the air force.”
Source: BBC