 100 million Naira reward has been offered to whoever can produce the leader of AIPOP, Namdi Khan, by a coalition of 75 Northern groups under the aegis of the Northern consensus movement. And the 2021 Global Peace Index GPI Ranking is out, a Nigeria's cause low globally and in the continent. This is plus politics, a dire merry anaconda. A coalition of 75 Northern groups under the aegis of the Northern consensus movement has declared wanted and has announced a reward of 100 million Naira for any persons who can produce for the constitution of his trial for alleged treason, we're talking about Namdi Khanu. The group accused Khanu and the Eastern security network of masterminding the recent spate of attacks on the Northern communities in the South East via what they call hate speech. Speaking on behalf of the coalition, Awal Abdullahi Aliyu urged the international community to facilitate Khanu's repatriation to Nigeria to face the charges against him. Well joining us to have this conversation is Tamaila Mosa and Emekal Para and also Dixson Osadje. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Thank you. One of those who do not know Emekal Para is a lawyer and Tamaila is the director of publicity coalition of Northern groups. I'm going to start with you Tamaila. This of course is a message coming from a coalition of Northerners and 75 of them apparently they seem to be a group of civil societies that have come together to form this merger. Should we be worried about this statement or this release by these so called group of 75? Okay. You know it was breaking out a point I couldn't hear you well. Can you repeat your question please? So I'm saying that this group of 75 and the statement that they have issued and the bounty that they put on the head of Namdi Khanu. Should we as a country be worried about this group of people? They seem to be civil society organizations coming together from the north. Is there anything for us to worry about? Because some people have said that they might be faceless and some other people are saying that they are actually real. I don't think there's anything to worry about. I'm actually hearing their name for the first time you know but of course that's not even the issue. I'm the director of the strategy and programs for the coalition of northern groups and I can tell you that we will never be a part of that kind of statement you know it's barbaric actually. I mean you should leave that for the federal government to decide whether you want to put you want to place a bounty on him or not. You cannot take the place of the government to begin to issue those kind of order you know. But of course I haven't said that I don't even think there's any need to begin to patronize some certain individual in the name of Namdi Khanu and begin to you know make him give him this larger than life you know image I mean it's a real call for and I think if there's anybody to worry the evil or evil brothers should be the ones who will worry a lot because like I keep saying we have you know a platform of all the Ohanesi and people across northern Nigeria where we also on the same what's up platform where they have any concern or any tension anywhere where they call our attention to it but of course you see if we begin to arrow gate I mean when certain individuals begin to arrow gate powers to themselves on what to happen by time in Nigeria I think it's it calls for more worry actually you know there's no there's no any call for concern. And I was saying about the evil while the evil brothers should be more worried is because somebody is in the UK and is setting fire in Nigeria himself and his family are in United Kingdom you know and I thought was prescribed on 17 September 2017 and it was you know pronounced a terrorist organization by the federal government of Nigeria and we are sitting here somebody who is in United Kingdom is actually telling you to go to war you know the other time he was ranting on an audio he was talking the UK I brought asking to come and account for two million dollars. These are the kind of individuals who is setting war in Nigeria and people are actually following him you know they should be more worried actually because you see evils have their structures their investments all over all across especially in Northern states and somebody is inciting you to go to war while he doesn't have a bicycle in Cano you know and he's telling you to burn down the whole place you know you should have a rethink about that. So I think from now on that's our take. I like that you have mentioned that because I was going to ask there have been several of these kinds of statements being made lately I remember a statement that was a letter that was posted somewhere in I think Delta State giving the governor an ultimatum of sorts and these people have been referred to as opportunist. If we keep having these kinds of things crop up by faceless people all across the country is that not a sign that maybe all the regions in this country need to look within them because they might be spoilers from amongst us. Well if I mean if different people keep springing up every day we have different kidnapping groups all over the place so and they also are issuing statements all manner of criminals are also issuing statement and I mean who wouldn't issue statement in the Nigeria of today that's where we are that's where we find ourselves and it's quite opportunist actually that we are here you know we have certain individuals who should be rotting in jail who are roaming the streets and you know they have the air frontry to be issues that men and be setting the country on fire and like I said the the platform that I said we are on with all the Ohaneze indigo across Northern states is to foster peace and unity amongst Nigerians and especially whoever is residing in Northern Nigeria should be at home that's the essence if they feel some kind of tension we know the most volatile states in the Northern states you know that we know once there's a crisis in this place you're sure is going to kick off in another place so we try what we're trying on our own and even though we I mean we're not getting funding from the government or some kind of assistance but we try what we can to say that go about your your lawful business and nobody's gonna trouble you we know who the people who want to set the place on fire and we're also talking to them that please we don't want that kind of thing in this region you know let me go to Barstah basically you for those for those who are actually doing this you know it's actually the call of the government the further government should make sure this I mean there's some kind of sanction on baseless individuals spring it up every day just to set the country on fire but Barstah interesting position that Somaila has taken and I want to ask you if just as I asked him we're seeing a lot of these things creep up every day and he said that it's because there's been a lapse in you know there's been a loophole in governance government is not stepping up to the plate to deal with these issues now here we are and a group of people are using the fact that Nnam de Cano is spreading hate speech and they're saying in fact they're accusing him of you know instigating attacks against Norcenas in the southeast there is some item of truth in the fact that Norcenas are being attacked in the south but is it Nnam de Cano's fault that these Norcenas are being attacked Nigeria is faced with all kinds of you know situations right now in terms of insecurity people are talking about safety on a daily basis Legos is having its fair share why do you think that Niger the Nigeria of today has gotten to the point that it is apart from the fact that our governments keep telling us that they're doing their best to deal with the situation why do you think that the cracks that we've always had as a country have become more and more obvious yes first of all I want to take exception to some of the background that has been laid by Mr. Mota the first place I want to say that Nnam de Cano's rhetoric while the ordinary person the average person the average Ibo man or woman may not take that route or may not totally agree with his kind of rhetoric I want to say that it is actually the federal government that have Nnam de Cano to have the symbolism he has today I also want to say going back to the so-called baseless modern groups that in fact the body language of the federal government have been encouraging such baseless goods now if you recall several times the organization known as FUNAM who are full of new nationality movement and some other first-leg groups have been coming up with a lot of threats in this country and the federal government have been encouraging them they have been total silence but once Nnam de Cano just says something that he cannot even enforce from thousands of miles away people spring up the federal government will come up with it and they will encourage mainly modern groups fully group especially or fully control groups to say something as if they are now directing it at me let me come in there and I'm not I'm not playing the devil's advocate I'm gonna let Tamila and I just want to I just want to I just want to set something straight when you say that the federal government is encouraging and supporting them to make statements where in those statements do you see it being signed or supported by the Ministry of Information for example the federal government or Mr. President let's let's say that let's say that you know that that's straight let us discuss with the federal government does not need to sign a statement there have been many statements made that have been very criminal in this country in fact that go to the root of our democracy some people have come to say that they own Nigeria the ethnic group also Niger on also Nigeria right they have made it openly and the federal government never did anything a lot of many people have come have in this country maybe maybe because of yet a problem they make statements that in fact are criminal that in fact should be should cause them to be taken to the court and the federal government never uttered a word so the body language of the federal government is that there are people that are allowed to say whatever they like and they won't nandikano I don't suspect to whatever of everything he says but I want to also correct something nandikano has never told anybody as far as I know have has not told evil people to go and burn things anywhere nandikano has been advocating for self-determination for the Biafran people that is what he has been doing that is what he has been doing and I also want to correct the impression if some people have whatever nandikano says something they indirect me threatening the evil people they remind them that they have property in the north they have they have your people spread all over we have begun to see such a statement as veiled threats against the evil people and that's what they are all right I'm gonna I'm gonna ask my question again I guess we made now and I think we take exception to it and we think it should stop Mr. Akbar I'm gonna ask another question that ties to the question I asked you earlier on if you even though you didn't really answer me what of the elders in the southeast of the country done to deal with the rhetorics that are coming from nandikano and and the people who follow him yes we know that Nigeria is divided along several lines especially ethnic lines but what have the leaders in the south is done to deal with this rhetorics how have they been able to change this narrative amongst their people because again police officers and police stations have been targeted INEC officers have been burned down by unknown gunmen and of course there's an opportunity for anybody to take advantage of these opportunities that are you know all over the country to perpetrate acts of violence to make certain people look bad but if our leaders of thought have stepped up to the plate to deal with the situation would we be having this conversation in the first instance I want to answer it this way um you can see that several Igbo leader have a decent made statements that are very clear for those who want to hear for those who want to understand for those who don't want to simply find a reason to castigate the Igbo people they have come to say that one they would want the federal government not to swell the situation that has given rise to the nandikano rhetorics if the federal government should do a balanced government if the body language and the speech emanating from actual rock and from the so-called in-quote presidency and from all the things they are doing their governors if it is there wouldn't be any need at all for nandikano to make those statements and if he were to make them he would not have come back he would not have people support him okay so i think if you throw back the buck to asora that is important but i want to know what to say you also had mentioned of something on non-gon man i was in the top deal about last week i was in imo state specifically inoware for three weeks and i witnessed a lot of things i tried to go out despite the threat despite the risk to my try to go out to find out certain things myself and i can tell you there are a lot of me into what you call the unknown woman and i think i think the federal government has a larger question to answer concerning the identity of the unknown woman okay all right i'm going to throw the next question to dixon asadje dixon you are security experts and i'm sure that you are almost sick and tired of having this conversation about the insecurity that we're experiencing in nigeria but um in cases like this like i mentioned earlier on we've had a similar situation in delta states where the governor was written a letter and given an ultimatum but these were faceless people these were categorized as opportunities same thing uh samila is saying that the norston coalition uh does not necessarily know these people and in fact is the first time is hearing of them so they obviously cracks they're all obviously opportunities for these excessive people to take advantage of what does this say about uh the leadership in our country and how the touch that security agencies have over the situation that we're facing as a country thank you very much maryan uh that is a very intelligent question because we need to understand that uh different governments sometimes are placed to the hands of some group of uh elements that are saying that they can be able to just uh decide what they want to say they want to think anything they want to think and uh you know i think the pedagometry are not taking lead in uh in leadership here uh maryan uh first of all i saw the uh 100 million dollar bounty on uh in abicano and i asked myself one or two questions if this group of people have the constitutional rights uh the legal rights to you know place a hundred million dollar bounty or any amount of money or to any Nigerian uh within the country or outside the country and i think they don't have that powers they don't have that constitutional back is they don't have that legal back is uh but coming to uh your question i think uh the federal governments are really not taking the bone by the horn you know because uh sometimes they place cyclists in some group of people uh will claim an act of terrorism like sometimes last year american or two years ago uh i think a me yeti a la uh claim responsibility of an attack uh in a state a better state yeah better state i heard that very clearly on the on the international news and local news and uh there was nothing done by the federal government uh you know when you keep silence uh to some group of people and you want to uh muzzle up to some group of people uh you are taking a full departure from effective leadership so for me i would just advise the federal government uh you know to lead they should just lead the Nigerians just take the lead you know uh they should just uh take the lead and not give room for any group of people uh to be placed in bouncing or fellow Nigerians there are these guys where uh muhammad shaka was killing Nigerians in the northeast killing our brothers and sisters behind the people none of them came out to place the bounty on uh shaka why are they placing bounty on the in ambicanu i'm not taking support of in ambicanu because uh most of the statements coming from in ambicanu are with all due respect to the evil people uh it's an act of terrorism and if we want to treat those statements i think uh is treading on the part of terrorism and that is just a chance um i'm curious because with all the tensions that we're having in the country whether it be in the south's in the in the north i mean the southwest they're also asking for the european nation the odoan nation i mean like i said and i'll keep sounding like a breaking record we are divided on ethnic lines or religious lines and and people are taking advantage of it now i want to put my people on the spot here should we be giving attention or the light of day to these sets of people who have no backgrounds who have no bearing because like samila said he doesn't know these people the same thing that our news people have carried that ultimate term uh about governor um the governor of delta state or koa should we be giving light to these messages should we even be blowing them up in the first instance why should these stories be making news because the truth is the more that we give life to these stories the more that we give attention to these unknown gunmen so what about intel i'm bringing back to you i'm cycling back to security how do we deal with intel before these types of stories become news why is there no background done on these kinds of things or these statements before they become news because it seems like this is just raising pure alarm as to something that's not really going to happen we talk about security our security is for you to go before the loss you know go before the enemy you know don't allow the enemy you know an opportunity to to excel or escalate just like you rightly said for me when it comes to inter our intelligence mechanism here in Nigeria it's not effective enough because like you rightly said we should be giving uh these guys an opportunity to you know excel in their in publicity because publicity plays one of the biggest role in terrorism because one of the uh fundamental uh excellence in terrorism how they flourish they flourish through publicity and if terrorism flourish through publicity uh we should be able to have our priorities you know we need to prioritize what goes out to the public just like your state Mary Ann for the past two three years on this very station i think i've made more than 35 to 40 appearances talking about grazing animals and cows that is a misplaced priority we need to prioritize human life first you know uh when we have a group of people coming giving us statements uh place a bounty we have uh government of delta states and other issues from other parts of the country that tells you that there is a failure in leadership and there's a failure in our intelligence because our intelligence uh mechanism that is the dss and the Nigerian uh uh intelligence agency are supposed to go before this uh this criminal is supposed to go before uh this uh this act how would you just come out here and just declare someone wanted you know it's gonna cost a lot of problem here in Nigeria because we are we're having a lot of agitations uh this are agitating for european nation uh with the iphone agitating for the uh for the back for for biafra you know we are not organized let me just use that word Mary Ann our government is not organized and the reason why our government is not organized Mary Ann is that we are just too weak you know to to strike uh some of this uh an element that poses themselves as as a threat to the uh survival of Nigeria so uh intelligence needs to back up you know like sometimes uh when an incident transpires the dss will come on board and tell us that uh they heard that something is going to happen next time uh you know they don't have what we call effective management of information we need to have an effective management of information from the dss department from the security agent that can be able to that can be able to go before this uh criminal element go before this uh group of people that are terrorizing the Nigerian state if we don't have our security agents on board i'm telling you it's going to be a sorry state we're going to be in a sorry state it's regrettable situation Mary Ann wow um let me go back to Simaela now um Osadje has brought up very interesting points now Simaela your group is like a pressure group and it's also like civil society um if a security person is telling us that government is not dealing with this issue as it should and we are in a sorry state Nigeria as we speak has uh is number eight um or rather we are yes we're the number eight's country in terms of the least peaceful countries in the world that is not a good thing well economy suffering we're looking for foreign direct investment who's going to come here if all that is making our headlines is killing is bounties on people is this people asking for secession or bandits kidnapping who wants to come here what are pressure groups like yours doing to get our governments to come alive again this government it does not really take lightly criticism so what other ways do we have to explore to get the attention of governments and get them to do the job that they applied to want to do okay first and foremost uh if you're conversant with uh you know uh news uh mediums around northern Nigeria especially from Abuja down now you will know that uh our coalition is at the forefront of you know always calling out the government to part time as at when you when they are feeling when they are sleeping we have called out the president on so many occasions and actually around northern Nigeria everywhere there has been crisis we have been there on ground we have interface with the governors of those states we have had a series of meetings with them always calling them out we have said this several times both from our press releases or radio interviews television interviews we have always done that we call the spade a spade is that the president has been sleeping but of course if i got the lately maybe from the past 10 days he granted a media interview to arise tv you know that's actually a welcome development that what makes all these things worse is when you have a president who doesn't talk to his people the people who he has come to serve he's keeping mute not saying a word we have cited several examples world over wherever there are incidences of killings once the security people can really clear the the the scene of the crime you know for for immediate access meant by the president the president of those nations move in right there to access the situation makes statement at the site of you know i mean at the scene of this crime it inspires the citizens of every nation it encourages them that well it's going to get better someday you know so that's the first thing to do we need to know what are you doing okay it's not just enough to condemn to start issuance press statement by some you know media media media aides and all of that that the president condemn social art and that and he's you know but of course i haven't said that we have also we have always been at the forefront of calling out that the president need to you know suck the saddest chiefs if there are money we have new service chiefs and what they have called to do we have to try to say something about what's what's the excuse now we have new service chiefs so what are we talking about now yeah yeah you see this is the point i will say it that time i've said it in several interviews that give them timelines you don't you understand if i have a security guard at my gate i give you timelines this is what i want if you can achieve that and you are booted out somebody else comes in that's the way it works you cannot have people sitting down they know where the problems are they know who are you know sleeping on duty and they are condoning them and you still let them be no it doesn't work like that you have to understand that there is an emergency something needs to be done there is need for immediate action Sumaila we have to go so quickly i'm tossing my last question to Mr Akbara i did ask you that question earlier on about what the leaders of thought in your area are doing but you are a lawyer and you are from the southeast well i know that the southeast has always spoken about getting the short end of the stick and all of that but when we seem to there are people who feel that the 80 percent of people in the southeast are sympathizers of Namdi Kanu but if we must get what if the southeast must get the kind of attention that it needs and the kind of development that he needs what strategies do you have to put forward so that you can get the attention of the federal government instead of the violence that we see engulfing the southeast on a daily basis you have one minute please yeah um um if um if i had some illusion about the fitness of our president i think uh that illusion uh was uh it was it was erased uh after i watched his last two uh in targets and what am i trying to say by that i think this i don't believe the assertion that this president is weak general buahari is not a weak man and even at his age i think he is a very strong man but i think the problem is that his focus has been wrong and that has been the thing swelling the unrest in several parts of the country including the east now if if i may use that language if he could redirect his mind and perhaps watch um watch the government of this i mean unjustifiable lopsidedness i think even with the little remaining time of less than two years president buahari will be able to do motherlessly well and set the country on a different footing all right i mean he needs to redirect himself if he does that i think all the politicians you see is the youth mainly the youths the youths have been mostly the supporters of onam the kano the supporters of sunday boho and if you find out if you go to the north you see that mainly the youths have been the people these bandits or so called people have been using so if you are not able to redirect the energies of the youths you create just uh people in nijia republic with the resources here we have to go you do a lot of that next then definitely you are telling the youths to follow nandikano to follow the rhetoric of sunday boho and all the rest of them okay well i want to thank you samaila musa is the director um of publicity uh coalition of norsen groups mecca para is a lawyer and diksin of sarje is a security expert thank you very much gentlemen for this very interesting conversation thank you all right well we'll take a short break thank you all for staying with us when we come back we'll discuss how peaceful my jury is stay with us