The government recently said it might also proscribe the Yoruba Nation movement led by Prof Banji Akintoye and Sunday Adeyemo also known as Sunday Igboho.
Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, says what the Muhammadu Buhari-led government has done to AK-47-wielding bandits is worse than designating them as terrorists.
Shehu disclosed this in an interview with BBC News Pidgin on Saturday morning.
He was responding to a question on why the Buhari’s administration has not outlawed blood-sucking bandits just as the current government proscribed the Indigenous People of Biafra and moved to do the same to Yoruba Nation secessionist group.
The Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN); and the then Solicitor General of the Federation and Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Justice, Dayo Apata; had in September 2017 approached the Federal High Court in Abuja to give judicial backing to the Executive Order of President Buhari, outlawing IPOB and its activities in every part of Nigeria.
The government recently said it might also proscribe the Yoruba Nation movement led by Prof Banji Akintoye and Sunday Adeyemo also known as Sunday Igboho.
“What the Buhari administration has done to the arms-wielding bandits is worse than being declared as terrorists. There is a subsisting order by the President that any arms-wielding, AK-47 bandits should be shot on sight,” Shehu said.
“Yes, IPOB has been proscribed by law of the land; there is no shoot-on-sight order.
“The Nigerian Air Force is busy bombing locations; the military is there on the ground, exchanging fire for fire, taking them out in hundreds, that is certainly not treating people (bandits) lightly.”