President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday dismissed the Boko Haram as neither religious nor ethnic underpinning, noting that “with adequate education, majority of Nigerians now know the truth”
Receiving Ahmad Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the State House, Abuja, Buhari said with concerted public enlightenment, it has become clear to the people that Boko Haram was a perversion of religion, rather than Islamic ideology.
According to the president “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”
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Buhari, who stated that things were very bad when he came into office, added that “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, on his part, likened extremism to cancer, which spreads and can also recede, noting that what Boko Haram was doing in collaboration with the Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP), “is perversion of religion.”
He said the ICC believes in complementarity, “which promotes collaboration, as against confrontation,”
He counseled Nigeria to, in concert with other Sahel/Lake Chad basin countries, get the United Nations Security Council to refer the atrocities committed by the terrorist groups operating in the region to ICC, for investigation and subsequent trial.
