President Muhammadu Buhari, Wednesday in Abuja, said the Boko Haram insurgency has neither religious nor ethnic underpinning, and with adequate education, majority of Nigerians now know the truth.
The President spoke when he received the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karin Khan, at State House, Abuja, saying that with concerted public enlightenment, it had become clear to the people that Boko Haram was a perversion of religion, rather than Islamic ideology.
According to a statement signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Buhari said, “To say Western education is unacceptable (Haram) is very fraudulent. That is why we are fighting them, and 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 statement is titled ‘With adequate education, people now know that Boko Haram is neither about religion nor ethnicity, President Buhari tells ICC prosecutor’.
“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.”
In his remarks, the ICC Prosecutor described extremism as cancer that spreads and can also recede, noting that what Boko Haram does in collaboration with the Islamic State of West African Province, “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 to the atrocities committed by the terrorist groups operating in the region to ICC, for investigation and subsequent trial.