The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, wants the international community to join in designating the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) a terrorist organization.
The minister, in an October 12, 2017 article in the United States newspaper “Washington Times” asked Nigeria’s international partners to support the Federal Government to designate IPOB a terrorist group.
In the article entitled: ”Thwarting Terrorism in Nigeria,” Mohammed said IPOB’s actions qualify it as a terrorist organization in most jurisdictions.
The federal government had on September 20, 2017, proscribed IPOB for violently agitating for the creation of an independent Biafra.
“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,” Mohammed said.
He cited some of the statements used by 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 actualization (of Biafra)”; “We need guns and we need bullets,” “If they don’t (give us Biafra), they will die.” .
He argued that IPOB was similar in its actions to groups like ETA in Spain, the Tamil Tigers was in Sri Lanka, and the PKK of Turkey all of which are proscribed by the U.S. State Department.
He said the Buhari administration would not make the type of mistake made by the previous administration in allowing terrorists to capture land.
“The government reiterates its appeal to its international partners to proscribe the organization, 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 emphasized.
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