Buhari’s Civil War Analogy Insensitive — Aisha Yesufu

Human rights activist, Aisha Yesufu, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s statement that he will treat young people misbehaving in the country in the language as they understand as “insensitive”

Yesufu stated this in a video released on Wednesday while reacting to the statement of the President on Tuesday after meeting with the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu; and other electoral commissioners in Aso Villa, Abuja, over the series of attacks on INEC facilities, police stations and other public infrastructure in the South-East.

President Buhari had said, “In the area of security, we have changed the Service Chiefs and the Inspector-General, and we are demanding that they rise fully to the challenges confronting us. There must be zero tolerance for all those bent on destroying our country by promoting crime and insurrection!

“Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

Yesufu in her reaction said, “My name is Aisha Somtochukwu Yesufu. I am Igbo, a threat to the Igbo people is a threat to me. Any attack on the Igbo people is an attack on me. Any malignment of the Igbo people is a malignment to me. We are all Nigerians and no Nigerian is more Nigerian than the others.

“The government must ensure that it deploys its resources and its apparatus equally to every section of this country.

“I condemn the tweet from the President where the President is threatening the Igbo people. He is threatening them with what happened in 1967. What happened in 1967 what a genocide, a crime against humanity and it must never be allowed to happen again.”

“For a President to come out today and use 1967 as a yardstick to threaten people with what happened then, with the 30 months of gruesomeness, with the 30 months of heinousness, with the 30 months of atrocities that were meted out on human beings, on fellow brothers and sisters, on children in this country, is inhumane, it is insensitive, it is callous, and it is unspeakable.”