Stop Giving Ethnic Colouration To Crimes, FG Tells Nigerians

The Federal Government has warned against giving ethnic coloration to banditry, kidnapping, and other criminal activities in the country.

According to the Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, giving ethnic coloration to crimes will lead to chaos and anarchy in the country.

He said this when he received a delegation from the Executive Intelligence Management Course 14 of the National Institute for Security Studies (NISS), led by its Commandant, Ayodele Adeleke, at his office in Abuja on Friday.

Aregbesola noted that no ethnic group in Nigeria glorifies crime and criminality, urging Nigerians to stop attributing crime to a particular tribe.

The minister asserted that the high rate of poverty in the country has contributed mostly to crimes and criminality in Nigeria and most societies of the world.

He said: “One thing we must all resist is the tendency of seeing crime in relation to one ethnic group or another, a criminal is a criminal no matter the ethnic group he or she belongs to,” he said.

“No ethnic group in Nigeria glorifies crime and criminality, so let us all condemn crime.

“Our morality itself makes crime an unpopular vocation.”

However, Aregbesola urged the NISS to develop a policy analysis that will ensure adequate reorientation of an average Nigerian to see crimes and criminality as they are.

He asked the institution to help Nigerians change the narrative of crime tied to a particular ethnic group and heating up the polity unnecessarily.