Lai Mohammed says Nigeria won’t become Afghanistan under Buhari’s regime

Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, says Nigeria was not a failed state and cannot go the way of Afghanistan, where the Taliban terrorist group has taken over the country’s leadership.

The Buhari regime spokesman asserted that “Nigeria is not and will not be a failed state. Yes, we have challenges in some corners of the country, but that has not made Nigeria a failed state.

“A failed state is one where basic facilities are not available, and everything has broken down, but Nigeria is not in that stage,” Mr. Mohammed said.

The minister stated this in Washington DC, United States, during his media engagements with the BBC Radio and Television, Bloomberg, and Politico.

Mr. Mohammed is said to be in the U.S. to meet with international media organizations and think tanks on the achievements of President Buhari’s regime and efforts made so far in tackling insurgency, banditry, and all forms of criminality.

Speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria after his respective meeting with the three media organizations, Mr. Mohammed said insinuation in certain quarters that the security situation in Nigeria could degenerate to that of Afghanistan was not correct.

According to him, Nigeria is not at war, adding that fake news and disinformation were being used to portray the country in a precarious situation.

Mr. Mohammed said the Buhari regime would continue to apply the carrot and stick approach in tackling the Boko Haram insurgency, an approach Nigerians have criticized as not only being ineffective but also unjust to the victims of terrorism.

“The lessons from Afghanistan today is that for over 20 years of American intervention and over a trillion dollars spent and thousands of American lives lost, it took the Taliban just a few weeks to recapture Afghanistan.

“This should be a lesson for everybody that when you are fighting an insurgency or movement driven by ideology, it is always difficult to overcome, and you must be resourceful, deploying both kinetic and non-kinetic approaches,” he said.

Mr. Mohammed said the non-kinetic approach had led to droves of insurgents coming out to voluntarily surrender their arms and pledge their loyalty to the government. He noted that with the recent development, the country was winning the war against insurgency.