Information Minister Lai Mohammed has described as “unfortunate” the fact that the U.S. does not see the Indigenous People Of Biafra, IPOB, as a terrorist organisation.
According to Mohammed who guested in on BBC Focus on Africa on Wednesday, the act and utterances of IPOB, led by Nnamdi Kanu, were acts of terrorists.
‘Nnamdi Kanu was caught on tape saying that they want Biafra and not peacefully but by force and that if they don’t get Biafra, Somalia will be a paradise with the kind of mayhem,’’ he said.
Asked why the President Muhammadu Buhari-government labelled a man without a weapon a terrorist, Mohammed said, ‘’This is also the same man who opens a safe for arms and the same man who set up his own Biafra national gathering, his own Biafra secret service and the same man who actually attacked army formations’’.
He added that it is unfortunate the U.S. does not see IPOB as a terrorist organisation.
“Because if countries decide to pick and choose which organisations are terrorists and which are not bearing in mind that terrorism has no boundaries…. I think what we should do is, every country should work together to ensure that terrorism does not strive.”
Like many have done, the BBC presenter also asked why more violent groups like armed herdsmen who have killed hundreds of people across Nigeria were not labelled terrorists.
‘’I think acts of terrorism should not be confused with terrorist acts,” the minister said.
“I just told you that when an organisation decides to set up its own parallel government; when an organisation openly solicits for arms all over the world; when an organisation has issued out its own passport and its own currency and there’s nothing wrong, … then it becomes a different thing.”
The presenter also suggested IPOB can decode to live up to that expectation now that they are proscribed.
The minister said Nigeria is so fragile that allowing IPOB’s unrest to go on can lead to reprisals in other parts of the country, and the whole country will be plunged into mayhem.
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