Nigeria not under military rule, Jonathan tells Buhari

Former President Goodluck Jonathan on Tuesday warned President Muhammadu Buhari to understand that “Nigeria is not under a military rule” and that soldiers are not “meant to fight criminality within a nation”.

This was contained in a Facebook post signed by his former aide, Reno Omokri on his behalf. The post was in response to the recent statement by the Nigerian Army that it will soon deploy soldiers to the South-South and South West parts of the country as currently being done in the Southeast.

Jonathan also condemned a statement by the Minister of Information and Cultures, Lai Mohammed, who said that the actions of IPOB started after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the 2015 election.

He said, “We want to advise the Buhari administration, which has announced plans to extend the military show of force to the South-South and the South-West through Operation Crocodile Smile, to tread with caution.

“Nigeria is no longer under military rule. In a democracy, you separate the military from the police. The military is not meant to fight criminality within a nation because they are trained to fight a nation’s external enemies.

“It is the police that are trained to fight crime internally. When the military starts doing the job of the police and starts fighting or doing what they call a ‘show of force’, the effect will not be to reduce crime. The effect will be to intimidate people,” Jonathan said.

On Mohammed’s claims that IPOB activities came following 2015 election loss and that looters and disgruntled elements in the opposition were the chief sponsors of the group, he said, “The insinuations in the press conference given by Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Sunday, accusing the opposition of sponsoring the IPOB and the fact that he mentioned that Nnamdi Kanu preached Nigerian unity during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan is another clear indication that the present administration has not left propaganda mode for proper agenda mode two and a half year into their tenure.

“If the government, in which Lai Mohammed serves, knows which opposition members are sponsoring IPOB, then they should identify them, arrest them and then prosecute them.

Read also: Amidst criticism, N’Army appears to reverse course, denies ‘declaring’ IPOB a terror group

“It is our suspicion that Lai Mohammed is talking from history seeing as he criticized the Jonathan government for banning Boko Haram in a statement he released on June 10, 2013, even though the Jonathan government had gone through due process before proscribing that murderous sect. Perhaps Lai Mohammed thinks everybody is like him and those he represents.”

He called on the minister to concentrate more on serving the nation than on propaganda.

Making reference to the statement by Senate President Bukola Saraki that the military had no right to declare IPOB as a terror group, Jonathan wondered if Saraki, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) could also be referred to as a sponsor of IPOB, for saying that proscribing and tagging IPOB terrorism was illegal.

 

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