The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said that the Fulani herdsmen and armed bandits causing havoc around the country, should never be compared to the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, a proscribed terrorists group from the South-East,
He added that the Northern criminals cannot be proscribed in Nigeria, because they are an unknown group.
The Minister of Information made this known in an interview on AIT’s ‘Kaakaki’, on Wednesday.
His exact words: “You proscribe known groups with names. You cannot just proscribe an unknown group, legally.
“Secondly, it is not whether they are proscribed or not, it is the way they are treated. Does the government actually treat them with kid gloves? The answer is no.
“When a group is championing a course for the disintegration of Nigeria… A group like IPOB (that) does not even recognise Nigeria as a State, sets up its own Army, and think it is a sovereign State, is different from bandits and criminals. Please, do not compare apples and oranges.”
When asked if the bandits are not also threatening the sovereignty of Nigeria, by taking up arms against the citizens, the Minister said that the cases are completely different.
He noted: “Security challenges are one thing. Challenging the sovereignty of Nigeria is a completely different thing. Do not let us dwell on semantics.
“Do armed robbers not threaten the security of lives and property? They do? Is there anywhere in the world that armed robbers have been proscribed?”
More news later…
