Middle Belt Youths Laud Mailafia for Insisting on Allegations
The Middle Belt Youth Council condemned the DSS for inviting Mailafia.
The National President of the Middle Belt Youth Council, Emma Zopmal, who spoke to one of our correspondents in Jos on Thursday, said the Middle Belt people were happy that Mailafia did not retract his statement.
He stated, “We in Middle Belt are happy that the former CBN deputy governor did not retract his statement despite the invitation meant to intimidate him by the DSS because what he said was nothing but the truth. And we are not surprised by his statement at all”
On his part, a member of the eighth National Assembly, Senator Shehu Sani, warned the Federal Government and state governors against harassing the former CBN deputy governor.
Sani stated in an interview with journalists on Thursday after receiving the ‘Africa’s Legend of Human Rights,’ award from the Human Rights Writers Association in Abuja.
He stated that the government should not make Mailafia a scapegoat after failing to stop Boko Haram insurgency and violence in the northern part of Nigeria.
At the event, the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Emmanuel Onwubiko, stressed that the government had no right to harass Mailafia.
He urged the media to stand in solidarity with Nigeria Info 99.3FM and protest the N5m slammed on the radio station by the National Broadcasting Commission for airing the program for which Mailafia was invited.
Sani said, “This is a democracy, people in the position of power must learn to respect the fundamental rights of citizens as guaranteed by the constitution of this country.
“We shouldn’t use Mailafia as a scapegoat or an excuse. Mailafia is not responsible for the insurgency and the violence, he is only expressing his opinion and that should be respected.”
Don’t Make Hero Out of Mailafia, Borno Concerned Elders Dean Advises Govt.
The Dean of Borno Concerned Elders, Prof Khalifa Dikwa, in an interview with one of our correspondents, said the DSS could decipher Mailafia’s statement as that of a politician preparing for the 2023 presidency.
Dikwa stated, “His (Mailafia) outburst may have been made after he was shown some deceitful theatrics by a political interest or foreign troublemaking intelligence which chose a dramatis personae to act like real repentant Boko Haram, planning to invade a region for false propaganda to take over the media space as if it is real.”
“We are dealing with some bad political actors who are readily willing to heat the polity with ethnoreligious sentiments, rather than wait for 2023 elections because they cannot galvanize votes in a democracy where numbers matter.” He advised the government not t make a hero out of Mailafia. Dikwa recalled that a former President while in the office once alleged that there were Boko Haram members in his cabinet.