Why Nigeria’s international partners must see IPOB as terrorist group -Minister Lai

Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has listed reasons why Nigeria’s international partners must designate the Indigenous People of Biafra as a terrorist group.

The minister gave this reasons in his article entitled ”Thwarting Terrorism in Nigeria”, which appeared in the ‘Washington Times’ on Thursday, October 12, 2017.

On September 20, 2017, the Federal Government of Nigeria proscribed IPOB over claims that the group has been violent in its agitation for a Biafra state in the South-East.

All efforts by the government to convince the world to accept the terrorist tag of IPOB appears not to be working as the United States, United Kingdom as well as the European Union have all refused to accept that IPOB is a terrorist organisation.

Even in Nigeria, groups as Ohanaeze, Afenifere and some prominent Nigeria have opposed the tagging of IPOB as a terrorist organisation by the Federal Government.

But in what appears renewed efforts to convince Nigeria’s international partners that the group is what the Nigerian government has tagged it, Mohammed listed in his article, actions he said, qualified the group as a terrorist organization.

He said, “The terror lays bare their opportunism. They masquerade as a separatist movement, yet they endanger the very people they claim to represent. In reality, IPOB cares about IPOB and nothing more.”

Using the words he attributed to be that of IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, such as ‘If they fail to give us Biafra, Somalia will look like a paradise compared to what will happen to that ‘zoo’ (Nigeria).’ ‘I don’t want peaceful actualisation (of Biafra)’; ‘We need guns and we need bullets’; ‘If they don’t (give us Biafra), they will die,’ Mohammed said IPOB should be regarded as a terrorist group.

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According to the minister, IPOB is like “ETA in Spain, the Tamil Tigers was in Sri Lanka, and the PKK is in Turkey (all of whom are proscribed by the U..S. State Department).”

He further stated that the Muhammadu Buhari government “will not make the same mistake as the previous in allowing terrorists to capture land.

“The government reiterates its appeal to its international partners to proscribe the organisation, and in doing so, starve it of the funds which gives it sustenance. Nigeria has just defeated one preventable terrorist insurgency. This one must not be given the chance to get a foothold,” the Minister wrote.

 

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