The Federal Government says it is “preposterous’’ for anyone to declare Nigeria a failed state on the basis of the country’s security challenges.
Minister of
Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated this in response to a recent
declaration by the Council on Foreign Affairs in the United States that
“Nigeria is at a point of no return with all the signs of a failed nation’’.
In an
interview on Thursday in Abuja, the minister stressed that “Nigeria is not and
cannot be a failed state’’.
Mohammed said
the declaration by the Council did not represent an official US policy.
He said,
“This declaration is merely the opinions of two persons, former U.S. Ambassador
to Nigeria and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations John
Campbell, and the President Emeritus of World Peace Foundation, Robert Rotberg.
“Declaring any
nation a failed state is not done at the whims and caprices of one or two
persons, no matter their status.
“Just because
Nigeria is facing security challenges, which we have acknowledged and which we
are tackling, does not automatically make the country a failed state.”
The minister
added, “Yes, the Council on Foreign Relations is a prominent US public policy
Think Tank, but its opinion is not that of the US.
“Like former
US Senator Daniel Moynihan said, ”You are entitled to your opinion but not your
facts”.
Mohammed
reiterated that Nigeria did not meet the criteria for a nation to become a
failed state.
He listed the
criteria to include inability to provide public service and inability to
interact with other states as a full member of the international community.
“Yes, the
non-state actors may be rampaging in some parts of the country, they have not
and cannot overwhelm this government,’’ he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment