AS efforts to completely rout the Boko Haram insurgents are being intensified, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh has cited hopelessness among others as the reasons why terrorists easily get converts in Nigeria.

Air Chief Marshal Badeh spoke yesterday in Abuja while receiving 3,000 books donated to military libraries by the ‘Support Our Troops Foundation’.

“I like to call it hopelessness; that is why they went the way they have gone because I cannot see why you should choose to die rather than to live. All these things happened because of poverty of the mind, poverty of education, poverty of the pocket, all manner of poverty and diseases. And it is like people feel life is not worth it.

“Insurgency, once it starts in a country, you live with it. It happens in every country, domestic terrorism. What is happening in the North East, we would not say it will be history but we will overcome all the major ones”, he said.

Badeh noted that rapid development at the grassroots by elected leaders would curtail future uprisings or revolts that would threaten the country, noting that if this is not done, the “people will revolt against you”.

He commended the foundation for the donation and called on Nigerians to continue to support the military to overcome the challenge of insurgency in the Northeast.

“Nigeria is saved when the troops are motivated, when they are urged on and supported to do their work. Nigerian troops are very brave soldiers; we have shown it all over the world,” he added.