According to the Associated Press (AP) Air Commodore Yusuf Anas of the Center for Crisis Communication said the deadline "may be unrealistic" and warned Nigerians not to view December as a "sacrosanct date when all suicide bombings will end."
He said: "The timeline on when to stop the insurgents from activating sleeper cells and detonating bombs into soft targets in any part of the country, especially in the frontline states, is therefore not tenable."
It will be recalled that in June, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the military to crush the insurgency by December, but the extremists have pushed back with village raids and urban suicide bombings that have killed more than 1,500 people.
Boko Haram was even named the world's most deadly extremist group in the Global Terrorism Index last week, with 6,644 deaths attributed to it in 2014 — more than any other extremist group.
The 6-year-old uprising already has killed 20,000 people and driven 2.3 million from the homes. Millions of dollars worth of property has been destroyed.