•President urges religious leaders to do more against insurgents
…Rep seeks fund for North East
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari yesterday replied the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar who warned him to tread cautiously in handling the Shiite/Army crisis which claimed some lives at the weekend.
The Sultan said if not checked, the crisis could lead to a nightmare.
Buhari said he expected religious leaders to do more to support the Federal Government’s efforts to strip Boko Haram and other extremist groups of all of its religious pretensions and fully expose the group as vicious terrorists, devoid of any moral or philosophical direction.
The Sultan, who is the spiritual head of Nigerian Muslims, had in response to the clash which resulted in some deaths and the destruction of the Shiite place of worship in Kaduna, had warned that “the history of the circumstances that engen dered the outbreak of militant insurgency in the past, with cataclysmic consequences that Nigeria is yet to recover from, should not be allowed to repeat itself.
“We urge the Federal Government to immediately constitute a judicial commission of inquiry to thoroughly unravel the immediate and remote causes of the current mayhem. Besides, the commission should also investigate the past incidents involving the movement so that justice can be done.
“The sanctity of human life is inviolable in Islam and pains- taking efforts should be made at all times to prevent bloodshed. In other words, life is sacred and the fundamental responsibility of government is to guarantee the security of life and property”.
The Sultan had urged Buhari to constitute a judicial commission of inquiry to look into the clash, recalling that the Boko Haram insurgency that the country is facing started in a similar manner.
But in a reply while hosting Ecuador’s new Ambassador to Nigeria, Leopoldo Rovayo Verdesoto, President Buhari noted that a lot had already been done to properly expose Boko Haram as a ruthless, destructive and misguided terrorist group.
“What we have succeeded in doing is to separate terror- ism from religion. The initial attraction for recruitments was religion. But now, people can- not relate with their relevance anymore and they are only associated with the destruction of lives and properties.
“If your life does not mean anything to you, other peoples’ lives will not mean anything to you as well. And people are beginning to see that Boko Haram is just about destruction and nothing else,” he said.
The President also told the ambassador, who was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja to present his Letter of Credence that his administration will continue to prioritize diversification and other measures to help the economy withstand the shock of falling crude oil prices. In a statement, the Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said the President also received the Letters of Credence of the new envoys of Zambia, Dr. Solomon Jere and his Colombian counterpart, Ms Claudia Turbay Quintereo.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has urged the government to channel money recovered from corrupt public officers and their accomplices to rebuilding North-East states ravaged by Boko Haram.
Gbajabiamila made the call while contributing to the debate on a bill entitled: “A Bill for an Act to Establish the North-East Development Commission” sponsored by the Speaker, Hon. Yakubu Dogara.
The bill passed Second Reading yesterday. It was referred to the committee on IDPs, Refugees and Initiatives on North-East.
Earlier, Dogara said 3.3 million persons have been dis- placed following the destruction of their towns and villages by Boko Haram. This is just as he said that there are 700,000 “casualties” of the insurgency.
He stressed that the reconstruction of communities destroyed by the insurgents as well as the rehabilitation of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) must be done holistically, hence the importance of establishing a development commission for the region.
The Sun.
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