The Federal Government has demanded a public apology from former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his comments about Boko Haram.
Obasanjo had on Saturday accused governments of strengthening Boko Haram’s agenda to Ismalise the country through payment of ransoms to free victims.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, asked the former President to withdraw the statement it described as ‘deeply offensive’ and ‘patently divisive.’
“Since the Boko Haram crisis, which has been simmering under the watch of Obasanjo, boiled over in 2009, the terrorist organization has killed more Muslims than adherents of any other religion, 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,” Mohammed said.
The minister also said that “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.”
He added that Buhari also “rallied the support of the international community, starting with the G7, and then the US, France and the UN” and that it “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.”
