Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said Wednesday that bandits could not be proscribed in Nigeria because they did not go by any name.
Mohammed spoke during an interview on AIT’s “Kaakaki programme”.
According to him, proscribing the bandits was not what really mattered but how they were treated.
Read him: “You proscribe known groups with names. You can’t just proscribe an unknown group legally.
“Secondly, it’s not whether they are proscribed or not, it is the way they are treated. Does the government actually treat them with kid gloves? The answer is no.”
Mohammed said that there was a difference between the bandits and the Indigenous People of Biafra, a group that has been proscribed by the Federal Government.
“When a group is championing a course for the disintegration of Nigeria… A group like IPOB (that) does not even recognise Nigeria as a state, sets up its own army and think it is a sovereign state; it is different from bandits and criminals. Please, don’t compare apples and oranges.”
The Minister said the bandits were not threatening disintegration of Nigeria, stressing that the cases were completely different.
“Security challenges are one thing. Challenging the sovereignty of Nigeria is a completely different thing. Don’t let us dwell on semantics.
“Now, don’t armed robbers threaten the security of lives and property? They do. Is there anywhere in the world that armed robbers have been proscribed?”
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