The Federal government cannot proscribe bandits in Nigeria because they don’t go by any name, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has said.
He said this on Wednesday in a television interview in Abuja.
“You proscribe known groups with names. You can’t just proscribe an unknown group legally,” Mohammed said.
“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,” he said.
The minister said there is a difference between the bandits and the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra.
“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 thinks it is a sovereign state is different from bandits and criminals. Please, don’t compare apples and oranges.”
