The Federal Government of Nigeria has rebuked the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, for his comments that cite ethno-religious motive to ISWAP and Boko Haram. He was also asked to withdraw his statement the government described as patently divisive and deeply offensive.
Furthermore, the former president was asked to tender a public apology. It said that such indiscriminate remarks are way below the level of a respected elder statesman.

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a statement issued in Abuja on Tuesday, said it was particularly pathetic that a man who fought hard to keep Nigeria united is the same person trying to exploit the country’s fault lines to divide it later in his life.

Mohammed said both Boko Haram and ISWAP are terrorist organizations that do not care about religion or ethnicity, when metting out their senseless destruction and killings.

Alhaji Mohammed said

Since the Boko Haram crisis, which has been simmering under the watch of Obasanjo, boiled over in 2009, the terrorist organization has killed more Muslims than adherents of any other religion, blown up more mosques than any other houses of worship and is not known to have spared any victim on the basis of their ethnicity. It is therefore absurd to say that Boko Haram and its ISWAP variant have as their goal the ‘Fulanisation and Islamisation’ of Nigeria, West Africa or Africa.

He said the mis-characterization of Boko Haram as an Islamic organization was put to rest by President Buhari, when he said, in his 2015 inaugural speech, that “Boko Haram is a mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam as one can think of”.

The Minister made a case that Obasanjo’s remarks were thus, mischievous, divisive, offensive, and insensitive in a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country like Nigeria. He wondered whether Obasanjo has no limit in throwing venomous darts at his perceived political enemies.

He said that it was several years late for the former president to prescribe seeking external assistance to end the Boko Haram/ISWAP crisis, as President Buhari has done that and even more since assuming office. Alhaji Mohammed stated that such measures has resulted to the phenomenal success Buhari has recorded in tackling the terrorists. Alhaji Mohammed said:

Shortly after assuming office in 2015, President Buhari’s first trips outside the country were to rally the support of Nigeria’s neighbours – Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger – for the efforts to battle the terrorists. The President also rallied the support of the international community, starting with the G7, and then the US, France and the UN.

That explains the massive degrading of Boko Haram, which has since lost its capacity to carry out the kind of spectacular attacks for which it became infamous, and the recovery of every inch of captured Nigerian territory from the terrorists

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.