Don’t create another Boko Haram in South East – PANDEF warns Army

The Operation Python Dance II in the South East has been attracting divergent reaction s across the country.

The Pan-Niger Delta Elders’ Forum (PANDEF), joining the league of critics, admonished the Nigerian Army on the danger of creating radicals of Boko Haram characters through the Operation Python Dance II in the South-East geopolitical zone.

The forum frowned at reports of clashes between soldiers and members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), in Abia State, over the deployment of soldiers and military hardware to the geopolitical zone.

PANDEF, in a statement on Thursday, by its Convener and leader, Edwin Clark, called on the military to thread carefully with Operation Python Dance II as “the use of force against defenceless civilians has never worked in Nigeria”.

The group said although it disagrees with the secessionist agenda of the IPOB, it recognises the rights of every Nigerian, including the people of the South-East.

It called on the federal government to take immediate steps to bring an end to the seeming militarisation of the region, declaring that Nigerians in any part of the country have the right to peaceful agitation and protest.

The statement reads in part: “May we remind ourselves of how Boko Haram started in the north-east. It was extra-judicial killing of leader of the sect, Mohammed Yusuf, in July, 2009, that led Boko Haram insurgency, which we have been trying to fight and contain like a war between two countries.

“We are worried at the quick deployment of military might to suppress defenceless civilians, while some parts of the country are still being tormented by armed and marauding criminal groups.

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“The Operation Python Dance I, Operation Crocodile Smile in the Niger Delta and now, Operation Python Dance II in the south-east are unhelpful strategies.”

PANDEF advised the federal government to channel its energies to the various agitations resulting from alleged marginalisation of the people of the South-East.

It cited the “total exclusion” of the people of the South-east on the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, when “some of the South-East states are heavily oil-producing”.

The group asked: “How can the government justify the fact that the South-East is totally excluded from senior positions of the Nigerian Armed Forces, the security services and the paramilitary services?

“Why will the annual budget of the federal government be so much skewed against the South-East and the South-South and heavily lopsided in favour of the North-West and the North-East?”