A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, on Sunday warned Nigerians against branding terrorists as bandits.
The lawyer made the call in a statement in Lagos.
He was reacting to the Federal Government’s refusal to declare bandits as terrorists.
The Senate had last week asked the federal government to declare bandits wreaking havoc in many parts of the North-West as terrorists.
The upper legislative chamber also charged the federal government to go after all known leaders of the bandits with a view to prosecuting them.
In the statement, Falana insisted that the bandits are not different from Boko Haram insurgents who are regarded as terrorists.
He added that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration was unprepared to declare bandits as terrorists.
He said: “The failure to ascribe these criminals as ‘terrorists’ as evidenced in the kidnappings of the Chibok and the Dapchi schoolgirls led to the proliferation of the scourge.
It is public knowledge that the dangerous criminal elements who kidnapped the Chibok and Dapchi secondary school girls in the North-East Zone in 2014 and 2017 respectively were not referred to as bandits.
They were called terrorists by the Federal Government and the media. The description was correct as the abductions carried out by the criminal elements were acts of terrorism.
“But for reasons best known to the Federal Government the criminal elements who are currently involved in the brutal killing of innocent people and abduction of thousands of people including primary school pupils in the North-West zone are called bandits and not terrorists.
“Embarrassed by the reluctance of the Federal Government to deal decisively with the so-called bandits, the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, in separate sittings, unanimously passed resolutions last weekend requesting President Muhammadu Buhari to declare the dangerous criminal elements as terrorists and proscribe them in accordance with the provisions of the Terrorism Prevention Act as amended without any further delay.
The federal lawmakers also asked President Buhari to declare all the known leaders of the bandits wanted and track them wherever they are for arrest and prosecution. So far, the Federal Government has ignored the resolutions.
“However, as the Federal Government is not prepared to declare them as terrorists we call on the media and the Nigerian people to stop referring to terrorists as bandits.”
