SAN FRANCISCO, September 20, (THEWILL) – The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Wednesday stated that Nigeria would have been engulfed in crisis if President Muhammadu Buhari was “overly concerned” about the legality or otherwise of deploying troops in the South-East.
THEWILL recalls that the Nigerian Army last week launched Operation Python Dance II to among other things arrest pro-Biafra agitations by members of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB. This came with clashes between members of IPOB and soldiers in Abia state, which became a flashpoint of violence.
Speaking with State House correspondents in Abuja, Mohammed stated that the country would have been in crisis but for the intervention of the President, who he said had approved the process for the proscription of IPOB.
He stated that the intervention of South-East governors and their northern counterparts staved off reprisal attacks in the North.
According to the minister, “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 troop deployment or the proscription of IPOB. All I know is that IPOB has engaged in terrorist activities, viz: setting up parallel military and paramilitary organisations, 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?” he asked.
