The federal government has described former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s comments ascribing ethno-religious motive to Boko Haram and ISWAP as deeply offensive and patently divisive.
The government added that such indiscreet comments are far below the status of an elder statesman. It stated this in Abuja on Monday in a statement issued by the minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
The Minister said it was particularly tragic that a man who fought to keep Nigeria one is the same one seeking to exploit the country’s fault lines to divide it in the twilight of his life.
Alhaji lai Mohammed said Boko Haram and ISWAP are terrorist organizations pure and simple, adding that they care little about ethnicity or religion when perpetrating their senseless killings and destruction.
His words: ”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,” Alhaji Mohammed said.
He said President Buhari put to rest the mis-characterisation of Boko Haram as an Islamic organization when he said, in his inaugural speech in 2015, that” Boko Haram is a mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam as one can think of”.
“Former President Obasanjo’s comments are therefore as insensitive and mischievous as they are as offensive and divisive in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Nigeria, wondering whether there is no limit to how far the former President will go in throwing poisonous darts at his perceived political enemies,” the minister declared.
He said Obasanjo’s call for wide consultations with various groups as part of the efforts to tackle the Boko Haram crisis has been neutralized by his ill-advised comments which have served more to alienate a large number of Nigerians, who are offended by his tactless and distasteful postulation.
The Minister called on the former President, whom he said took bullets for Nigeria’s unity, not to allow personal animosity to override his love for a united Nigeria, saying it will not be out of place if he withdraws his unfortunate statement and apologizes to Nigerians.
