FG Slams ‘Mischievous’ Obasanjo, Demands Apology Over ‘Fulanisation, Islamisation’ Claim

The Nigerian government has asked former President Olusegun Obasanjo to retract his statement and offer an apology to Nigerians over his recent comments that the aim of the Boko Haram insurgents was to “Islamize” and “Fulanize” the country.

Obasanjo had said Boko Haram insurgency has transformed into “West African fulanization, African Islamization and global organized crimes of human trafficking, money laundering, drug trafficking, gun trafficking, illegal mining and regime change.”

The former president made the claim on Saturday in a keynote address he delivered at the 2019 Synod of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), in Oleh, Isoko South council area of Delta State.

While calling for foreign assistance and corporation to end insurgency in Nigeria and Africa, Obasanjo blamed its escalation on government’s poor handling of the menace, adding that the country’s security challenges have gone beyond the capacity of the government.

But responding through the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the Federal Government asked Obasanjo to withdraw his “indiscreet, deeply offensive and patently divisive comments” that are “far below the status of an elder statesman.”

The government also asked the ex-president to apologise to Nigerians.

Mohammed said, “It is 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”.

The minister said Boko Haram and ISWAP are simply terrorist organisations who carless about ethnicity or religion when perpetrating their killings and destruction.

“Since the Boko Haram crisis, which has been simmering under the watch of Obasanjo, boiled over in 2009, the terrorist organisation has killed more Muslims than adherents of any other religion.

“The terrorist group 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,” he said.

Mohammed recalled how President Muhammadu Buhari made his stance on the insurgents clear when he said, in his 2015 inaugural speech, that: “Boko Haram is a mindless, godless group who are as far away from Islam as one can think of”.

The minister therefore described Obsanjo’s claim as, “insensitive and mischievous as they are as offensive and divisive in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country like Nigeria”

“It is 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 said Obsanjo’s call for foreign assistance to end the insurgency is rather belated as President Buhari had done that and more since assuming office, “hence, the phenomenal success he has recorded in tackling the terrorists”.

“Shortly after assuming office in 2015, President Buhari’s first trips outside the country were to rally the support of Nigeria’s neighbours – Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger – for the efforts to battle the terrorists.

“The President also rallied the support of the international community, starting with the G7, and then the US, France and the UN.

“That explains the massive degrading of Boko Haram, which has since lost its capacity to carry out the kind of spectacular attacks for which it became infamous, and the recovery of every inch of captured Nigerian territory from the terrorists,” he said.