FG may clamp down on MASSOB, OPC

FG may clamp down on MASSOB, OPC

THE Federal Government may soon commence a clampdown on “extremist groups”, especially the Oodua People’s Congress and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra.

President Goodluck Jonathan has said the OPC, MASSOB and  the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram, constitute threats to national security.

“The Nigerian state faces three fundamental security challenges posed by extremist groups like Boko Haram in the North; the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra in the South-East; and the Oodua People’s Congress in the South-West.

“The activities of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra and OPC, though not as violently intense as those of Boko Haram, they still pose a serious security challenge to the Nigerian state,” Jonathan said in his 234-page mid-term report presented to Nigerians as part of the activities marking the nation’s Democracy Day, a copy of which was obtained by our correspondent on Thursday.

But both factional leaders of the OPC, Dr. Fredrick Fasheun and Chief Gani Adams, on Thursday denied the allegation that their group constitute security challenges to the country. They spoke separately to one of our correspondents on the telephone.

While Fasheun described the allegation as unfair, Adams said such assessment did not take into consideration the activities of the group in the last eight years.

“OPC does not constitute any security threat to any people let alone Nigeria. So, anybody that ties the rope of insecurity around our waist is being unfair to us. We love Nigeria but we love social justice more,” Fasheun said.

Adams added that rather than constituting a security threat to the country, OPC had for the past eight years, helped to promote peace in the South-West Zone of the country and by its festivals, helped to develop Nigeria tourism.

The MASSOB also denied that its members constituted threat to national security.

Its Director of Information, Mr. Uchenna Madu, told our correspondent on telephone that the President could not have said MASSOB had been a threat to national security.

Punch Newspaper