By PHILIP NYAM

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila has said miscreants and criminals camouflaging as separationists in the South East and South western part of the country are not different from members of the Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP).

Gbajabiamila, who made this declaration Wednesday on his address to welcome lawmakers from their annual recess, said the House has now focused its security concerns on the antics of bandits and terrorists.

He said: “We have rightly focused our national security concerns on the machinations of extremist insurgents who seek to remake our world in the image of their discredited theocracy and bandits who maraud and terrorise whole regions for profit.

“We must now add to these concerns an emerging threat that presents the same clear and present danger.”

According to the speaker: “In the South of Nigeria, East and West, miscreants and criminals masquerading as separationist activists have emerged to wreak havoc, take lives and commit economic sabotage against fellow Nigerians and against the state.

“These people, in their inclination for devastating violence against fellow citizens, their appetite for the destruction of private property, their disruption of academic activities, commerce, and industry, their propensity for defiling institutions of the state, society and community, their refusal to engage in debate, or to consider the possibility of dissenting opinions and alternative viewpoints, are no different from Boko Haram and ISWAP. Given space and time, they will take our nation down the same path of destruction.” (New Telegraph)

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