The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has said the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and Yoruba Nation agitators are not different from the Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists due to the refusal of the separatist groups to accommodate dissenting opinions.
Gbajabiamila stated this on Wednesday in his address to welcome members of the House back from their nine weeks recess.
Recall that on July 15, the lawmakers had proceeded on recess after considering some major bills including the Electoral Amendment Bill and Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
While the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, advocates the secession of the Igbo-populated South-east zone, the South-west zone, led by Sunday Adeyemo aka Sunday Igboho, is agitating for a Yoruba nation.
Addressing lawmakers on Wednesday, Gbajabiamila said given “time and space,” the separatist movements in the south will drag Nigeria towards the path of destruction as the groups are posing new threats to the national security of Nigeria.
He said, “Thus far, we have rightly focused our national security concerns on the machinations of extremist insurgents who seek to remake our world in the image of their discredited theocracy and bandits who maraud and terrorise whole regions for profit.
“We must now add to these concerns an emerging threat that presents the same clear and present danger. In the South of Nigeria, East and West, miscreants and criminals masquerading as separationist activists have emerged to wreak havoc, take lives and commit economic sabotage against fellow Nigerians and against the state.
“These people, in their inclination for devastating violence against fellow citizens, their appetite for the destruction of private property, their disruption of academic activities, commerce, and industry, their propensity for defiling institutions of the state, society and community, their refusal to engage in debate, or to consider the possibility of dissenting opinions and alternative viewpoints, are no different from Boko Haram and ISWAP. Given space and time, they will take our nation down the same path of destruction.”
