‘Don’t demonize the Americans’ – former Minister of Foreign Affairs Prof Akinyemi speaks on terror alert
Nigeria’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, has reacted to security advisory issued by the United States and other countries asking their citizens to leave Abuja over planned terror attacks.
Minister of information, Lai Mohamed had expressed dissatisfaction over the alert that has since seen business collapse and residents living in fear. Mohamed even questioned the US if Nigerians living abroad also feel safe?
But Professor Akinyemi described the times in Nigeria as worrisome, and moved to deconstruct the roles of every actor in the game.
“The security threat that has now been made public is increasing every day. The US started it, UK, India joined and Australia, Canada have joined, and I suspect that the number is going to be increasing.
“Don’t forget that intelligence that is available to embassies in Abuja are not collated from just the information gathered within Abuja or Nigeria. This information could have been picked up from any of the listening posts of the US anywhere in the world. We Nigerians don’t have that intelligence capability, therefore, don’t let us demonize the Americans or any of the embassies that are involved in this”.
Prof Akinyemi further explained that “America’s responsibility is to its citizens; one American citizen getting killed in any of what they suspect may happen, will bring the wrath of Congress on the American Ambassador here. The job of the Nigerian Minister of information is to calm things down in this country and to deflect the panic effect the information may cause. So, each one is performing its role”.
He reiterated that “These are inconvenient times for Nigeria because it’s election time and campaigns have started. All these one million, two and five million-man-march we see all over the country are soft targets for terrorists and we know; the Americans don’t need to tell us, we’ve been having these terrorists’ attacks; go back to the time of Jonathan, there was Boko Haram attack even on the United Nations building in Abuja.
“I have served on Boko Haram committee, where we went round this country and villagers told us that at night, they had seen helicopters landing, dropping weapons, supplies for these miscreants. The villagers had no reason to lie that they saw those helicopters if the helicopters were not available”.
He further stated that what he will expect to happen now that Nigeria is exposed because of the campaign season, is for the President to come back from South Korea; if he is not already back.
He shouldn’t go anywhere, because he’s got flood problems on his hand, the evacuation of foreign personnel from his country which has raised what I would call the threat target of Nigeria. He should order the National Security Adviser, (because this no longer a question of military versus military), after assessment, to call the political parties to stop these million-man march that can be easily attacked.
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