By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday doubled down on his government’s characterisation of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) as a terrorist organisation even as he refuses to brand Fulani herdsmen and bandits as such.
The President spoke through his media aide, Mallam Garba Shehu.
A statement by Shehu on Sunday said IPOB members are not freedom fighters but people who are committing acts of terrorism in order to steal money.
While assuring Nigerians that his government was on top of the worsening security situation in the country, Buhari accused those framing the crisis as religious of doing so in order to “help raise donor-dollars for international NGOs.”
Buhari, however, claimed that the government was “moving ahead with force to crush the perpetrators of the recent incidents of unrest in Plateau State.”
But the President was particularly caustic in his remarks on IPOB.
“Further afield in the South-East, IPOB are not struggling for freedom when they attack police stations and property, but rather committing acts of terrorism in order to steal money,” the statement said.
“IPOB is not defending Christians – as their highly-paid foreign lobbyists claim – when almost every citizen of those states they terrorize is uniformly Christian.
“Yet mistakenly, and because the lobbyists for IPOB have duped them, some misguided foreign media and politicians believe it so.”
But while not stating how the government plans to stem the ugly tide of insecurity in the country, the President said “communities must unite against these horrific attacks,” warning that “retributive violence is not the answer.”
Below is the full text of the statement
STATE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE SUNDAY AUGUST 29TH, 2021.
The presidency wishes to assure all citizens that as a government, the administration is on top of events and is moving ahead with force to crush the perpetrators of the recent incidents of unrest in Plateau State.
But to achieve success, our communities must unite against these horrific attacks. Retributive violence is not the answer.
While these troubled communities are being reinforced with security personnel, our religious, traditional and other community leaders must not allow the use of their spaces for the propagation of violence and incitement to violence.
Attempts to simplify the reasons into a basic narrative may help raise donor-dollars for international NGOs, fill pages of overseas newspapers and burnish foreign politicians’ faith credentials: but this does not increase understanding, nor offer solutions. If anything, simplistic theorizing and finger-pointing makes the situation worse.
It is important both for Nigerians and the international community to appreciate that there are a multitude of factors attendant to these troubles.
There is the Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorism, as well as the spate of kidnappings for ransom, transformed by some misinformed global media into a Muslim-on-Christian threat. Yet, in reality, there are no religious connotations at all when the primate purpose of these acts is to extract money.
Then the herder-farmer clashes. While international voices and some Nigerian politicians who seek personal gain from division declare this a matter of religion, for those involved it is almost entirely a matter of access to water and land. Herders have moved their cattle and into contact with farmers for millennia. But, increasingly, due to population pressure, the increased aridity of northern states, and climate change they are forced to travel further south to find grazing lands.
Then, further afield in the South-East, IPOB are not struggling for freedom when they attack police stations and property, but rather committing acts of terrorism in order to steal money. IPOB is not defending Christians – as their highly-paid foreign lobbyists claim – when almost every citizen of those the states they terrorize is uniformly Christian. Yet mistakenly, and because the lobbyists for IPOB have duped them, some misguided foreign media and politicians believe it so.
As for Nigerians, what we need is to come together. And we must do this firstly and for the most part by our own hands, by casting asunder those who seek to divide us for their own nefarious financial and political gain.
