From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that the Boko Haram insurgency has neither religious nor ethnic underpinning, and with adequate education, majority of Nigerians now know the truth.
According to a statement by Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, Buhari, said this Wednesday in an audience with Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karin Ahmad Khan, at State House, Abuja.
The President added that with concerted public enlightenment, it had become clear to the people that Boko Haram was a perversion of religion, rather than Islamic ideology.
Buhari said: “God is justice. You can’t kill innocent people, and shout; Allah Akbar (God is great). It’s either you don’t know that God at all, or you are simply being stupid.
“To say Western education is unacceptable (Haram) is very fraudulent. That is why we are fighting them, and educating the people. And we are succeeding a lot. We came to office when things were very bad, but we are educating the people. Education is fundamental. Religion and ethnicity are out of it. Some people have just made it a lifestyle to cause confusion, destruction and death.”
The ICC Prosecutor said extremism was like cancer, which spreads and can also recede, noting that what Boko Haram does in collaboration with Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP), “is perversion of religion.”
He said the ICC believes in complementarity, “which promotes collaboration, as against confrontation,” counseling Nigeria in concert with other Sahel/Lake Chad basin countries to get the United Nations Security Council to refer the atrocities committed by the terrorist groups operating in the region to ICC, for investigation and subsequently trial.