Balarabe Musa (Elder Statesman and former Governor of Kaduna State) Speaks:
You were aware that Boko Haram gave an ultimatum to Southerners living in the North to leave or face the consequences. Do they speak for the North?
Boko Haram cannot speak for the North. That is first and foremost. In the North, we don’t even know what these people constituting themselves into the group called Boko Haram are. There is a lot of suspicion about the group. Some believe that it is an agent and it is only hiding under the identity of being an Islamic sect in carrying out its activities.
But if you look at their activities, you would know quite well that it is an unIslamic group. Mark my word, it is merely using Islam as a cover and people should take it for that. Therefore, the onus is on the government to do what it should do to tackle the menace squarely.
The fact that they were even asking people to leave the North is a further proof that the group is not Islamic. If it is Islamic, really, it will not talk like that because there are Muslims in the North who have Southern origin. Likewise, there are Christians in the North who are of Northern origin.
And members of these two major religions are both in the North and in the South. That is one of the things that gives me the impression that it is not really an Islamic sect. So, it is not possible to say that kind of thing in a way that we will take them seriously.
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They should ignore the threat because in the past, other organisations did the same thing. They threatened Muslims, they threatened Southerners and it ended just like that. Does it mean that because of the threat of the past, there are no longer Southerners still living in the North till today? It is only unfortunate that things like this are happening in our democracy but I must tell you that there is no cause for alarm. People should not take it seriously.
It makes sense. Nigeria has been targeted for a long time. Thankfully, the culture of violence is not the culture of Africans. What I mean here is violence for its own sake or violence simply because a group of individuals who consider themselves worthy of life better than the rest of the population seek to control another weaker group for monetary gain.