Federal government said the timely commencement of the proscription process of the Indigenous People of Biafra IPOB, by President Muhammadu Buhari prevented the crises in the South East from snowballing into bigger nationwide crises.
This is just as he officially revealed that President Buhari has approved the process of proscribing the Separatist Organization known as Indigenous People of Biafran IPOB.
The Minister of. Information and Culture Lai Mohammed disclosed this during an interaction with The State House Correspondents at the Presidential Villa Abuja, shortly after the weekly Federal Executive Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
The mInister who said he refused to join the debate over the legality or otherwise of the proscription of the group, revealed that “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.”
“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?
“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.”
The Minister also accused IPOB of externalizing it’s campaign by writing to the government’s and Parliaments in the West nation’s alleging genocide in the South East.
He said that the IPOB has engaged in using highly emotive videos of killings to deceive the international community.
Lai Mohammed commended the Governors in the South East for dissociating themselves from the violent campagn embarked upon by the 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”
According to him “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?”
“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”
-Mohammed also insisted that ” IPOB is a contraption against the Buhari Administration, adding 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.”
Meanwhile, the Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday granted an order declaring the activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist organisation and “acts of terrorism and illegality.”
The order, which followed a motion filed by the filed by the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami, also proscribed the existence of IPOB throughout Nigeria, with particular attention paid to the South-East and South-South regions.
Onyinye Nwachukwu, Abuja
