Lai Mohammed
President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the proscription of the Indigenous People of Biafra, led by Nnamdi Kanu.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday.
Mohammed, who spoke with State House correspondents at a media interaction after the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja on Wednesday, said the process for the proscription of IPOB had commenced.
In his preliminary remarks before he took questions from the State House correspondents, Mohammed said: “As you are aware, I have had a series of media interactions and Radio/Television appearances in the past few days, all dwelling on the topical issue of the moment, the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra. I will briefly summarize the kernel of my engagements so far.
“But before I proceed, let me state clearly that it is within the rights of individuals or groups to seek self-determination. But this pursuit has to be non-violent.
Where any group crosses the line by engaging in violence, it risks being cut to size and that’s exactly what has happened to IPOB.
“I am not interested in the semantics or legality of troops deployment or the proscription of IPOB. All I know is that IPOB has engaged in terrorist activities, viz: setting up parallel military and paramilitary organizations, clashing with the national army and attempting to seize rifles from soldiers, using weapons such as machetes, molotov cocktails and sticks and mounting roadblocks to extort money from people, among others.
“To those who have engaged in semantics or legality, I ask: Which country in the world will tolerate those activities I have listed above? Which national army will look the other way when it is being attacked by a band of thugs?
“For those who are fixated with legality, I have good news for them: President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the process of proscribing IPOB, and the procedure is on as I speak.
But I ask, if the President had been overly concerned with legality, where would Nigeria have been today? If attacks in the South-east had attracted reprisals elsewhere in the country, what would have happened.
But for the quick action of state governors in the South East and and the North, there would have been a conflagration of immense proportions.
“Permit me to especially commend the Governors in the South East for making it clear to IPOB that it has no support for its violent campaign. By its action, the Governors have cut off the oxygen that IPOB needs to survive.
If the elected Governors of all the states in the South East have banned the activities of IPOB, who then is the organization fighting for?
“I did state, during my earlier interactions, that IPOB is a contraption against the Buhari Administration, and that it is being sponsored by those I call the Coalition of the Politically-Disgruntled and the Treasury Looters.
I stand by that statement despite the noise emanating from the usual suspects. To quote the title of a James Hadley Chase novel, The Guilty Are Afraid. I will add: The guilty are always overly agitated. Good for them.
“Finally, IPOB has decided to externalize its campaign. It has written to governments and parliaments in the West alleging genocide in the South East. Even a dictionary definition of ‘genocide’ does not support that claim.
IPOB has also engaged in using highly-emotive videos of killings, which it harvested from other lands and were doctored, to hoodwink the international community.”
