“If you compare what’s happening in Nigeria to what happened in Ireland some years ago, you had Sinn Fein on the one hand and then you had the IRA on the other. The IRA was the armed wing of Sinn Fein and as far as I’m concerned, Boko Haram could well be described as the armed wing of the opposition, today.” The former minister made this statement while addressing issues concerning the State of the Nation, on Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily.
“It’s very clear to me when you look at all these things that Nigeria is a nation that is at war and we need to be able to do something about this and recognize that when we are at war, you don’t start fighting the government of the day.”
Fani-Kayode, who had been known to critise the Goodluck Jonathan administration until a recent reconciliation, called on citizens to support the government. “What you do is you try to join forces with all the relevant individuals to fight the insurgency, fight the militants and move the country forward”, he said.
He said that the failure of citizens to understand the situation may lead to a take-over of government by the militants, noting the bold advances of militants in Iraq, who are attempting to take over the nation’s capital, Baghdad. He maintained that “sooner or later, you will have such advances being made on Abuja by the Islamic fundamentalists and by Boko Haram”, if care was not taken.
He argued that the Boko Haram was simply after establishing an Islamic fundamentalist state and so it was clear that there could be no basis for negotiation.
“This war is not between Christians and Muslims”, he argued, adding that “It’s between those that believe in Islamic fundamentalist state or the creation of it and Islamic fundamentalists on one hand against the rest of us – that is, Christians and Muslims together and everybody else.”
The former Minister of Culture and Tourism went further to describe members of the sect and their supporters as beasts, who would sacrifice fellow Muslims as a result of their depravity. “They will kill their own Muslim brothers and sisters, they will kill Christians, they will kill anybody to achieve their objectives and to have their way.”
Asked about the identity of Boko Haram supporters, Fani-Kayode said that there were “some people in this country that believe that it suits their purpose for Boko Haram to kill people in order to discredit the government, destabilize the country and bring the government down.”
He went further to point fingers at the opposition party; maintaining that some members have sympathies for Boko Haram. In defending his claims, he referred to statements credited to members of the opposition, concerning the possible outbreak of violence if the Presidency did not return to the North in 2015.
“That was in 2011, 3 years later, we’ve seen evidence of that. We’ve seen that unfolding in this country”, he said, alleging that threats of making Nigeria ungovernable by some APC elements make them obvious sympathisers. “Look at the comments of somebody like General Buhari, who was once Head of State in this country. “Just last year, he said that Boko Haram should be granted amnesty, that Boko Haram should be treated with kid gloves, that Boko Haram should be treated in the same way as the Niger Delta militants (that is to say they should be sent abroad, paid a monthly salary and so forth and that they should not be killed.”
Fani-Kayode noted that the opinion was out of place considering the fact that “they killed almost 15,000 of our citizens, at that point in time… This is not the sort of thing anybody of that stature ought to be saying.” The former minister further noted that the former Head of State had openly attempted to spread Sharia to all States of the Federation before, and that his objective back then now “tallies with the objective of Boko Haram.”
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