Festus Keyamo, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, has reacted to the spate of insecurity in the South-East region, saying the people who instigate crisis in the region are the same ones who will declare Nigeria a “failed state”.
An apparently enraged Keyamo made his position known in a series of Twitter posts on Sunday.
The South-East region has witnessed an increase in the rate of crimes, with police stations, correctional centres and offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) being the target of the hoodlums in the five eastern states.
The violence, however, took a new dimension on Sunday when Ahmed Gulak, an ex-special adviser on Political Matters to former president Goodluck Jonathan, was shot to death by unknown gunmen suspected to be armed bandits.
According to the Imo State Police Command, the chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was attacked by the gunmen around Umueze Obiangwu in Ngor-Okpala Local Government Area of Imo State, close to the Sam Mbakwe Airport road in Owerri, the state capital.
Reacting to the chain of events, Keyamo said it is ironic that people who claim to be angry with their neighbours and fighting for the liberation of their children are burning their own homes.
The minister said the instigators see their actions as a means to achieve their objective, which, he said, is to destabilise the country.
Keyamo, who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said it is unfortunate that the residents of the region, who are the immediate victims of the violence, have been brainwashed in supporting the criminal elements all in the name of regional emancipation.
He stated that the criminal instigators need to be halted before the situation escalates.
Someone who is angry with his neighbours sets his own house on fire & makes it uninhabitable for his own children, who then take refuge in the neighbours’ houses. But he claims to be fighting to ‘liberate’ his children. This is the madness going on now in a part of this country.
— Festus Keyamo, SAN (@fkeyamo) May 30, 2021
“The instigators of insecurity are the same people who turn around to declare Nigeria a ‘failed state’. Therefore, their criminal actions are not just an end in themselves, but a means to an end, which is to destroy the govt/country. We must all mobilise against these scoundrels.
“The imbecility is that some of the immediate victims of the insecurity in their backyards have been brainwashed to believe the these villains are fighting for them. They see the villains as their heroes and those trying to educate them as the villains. It’s such a nauseating pity,” Keyamo tweeted.
