Iraq and Syria have ‘direct bearing’ on the growth of Boko Haram

A civil society organisation, Stand Up Nigeria (SUN), has alleged that the insecurity in Iraq and Syria have a direct bearing on the growth of the Boko Haram sect.

Christie Amor, SUN’s director of public affairs, said this at a press conference in Abuja.

She said Amnesty International allegedly played “damaging roles” in both countries, and is now targeting Nigeria.

“In early 2011, Amnesty International gave the world a bogus report on whose strength a no-fly zone was imposed on Libya. The sequence of event after this led to the ouster and eventual murder of Muammar Qaddafi,” she said.

“By June of the same year the same Amnesty International’s investigation admitted that the international NGO cannot prove that Qaddaffi’s troops committed the rights violations as it previously claimed.

“Instead, AI found that the so called rebels made false claims and manufactured evidence. In 1990, Amnesty International was pivotal to the decision by members of a western coalition to invade Iraq and consequently spark off the chain of events that produced today’s basket case called Iraq.

“The foreign interventions provoked on the strength of its fantasy reports has eroded the ability of the Syrian military forces to decisively clear out the foreign terrorists that overran their country since attacks on ISIS are inevitably researched as massacre of civilians.

“If we look closely, the three countries – Iraq, Syria and Libya – have direct bearing on the growth of Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“The growth of ISIS in Iraq and Syria was a morale booster for insurgents in Nigeria while the arms supplied to moderate rebels in those places found their way across the Mediterranean to African shores from where a now porous and borderless Libya ensure those advanced weapons end up with Boko Haram.”

Amor said the group’s report that military personnel killed 150 members of the Indegenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is not true.

She wondered why the group did not make any public statement on the extra judicial killings in the US

“It is suspicious that in the United States where police departments were reported to have extra judicially executed 997 people between 2015 and now, Amnesty International has not made any public report in the tragic systematic execution of ethnic minorities,” she said.

“If Amnesty International has been able to issue any report about this tragic systematic execution of ethnic minorities then the report must have been specifically kept secret.

“It is crystal clear that Amnesty International has concluded and is resolute on giving Nigeria the Libya treatment whereby this country would not be able to defend itself against the so called “unarmed activists” who we know as Biafra separatists.

“This is why it issued its recent report that lied about 150 Biafran separatist terrorists being killed by the army. Amnesty International’s research methodology and even the wording in this case is frighteningly similar to the one it issued in Libya and Iraq before then, with heavy reliance on the testimonies of the activists.

“We therefore ask pertinent questions as citizens: Who protects the common masses should the military decide to go to bed?

“In whose interest would it be for our army to become incapacitated as being pursued by Amnesty International: the masses or the terrorists and hoodlums who carry out these criminal infractions? What is our government waiting for before expelling Amnesty International or taking other decisive steps?”