We Didn’t Form Lakurawa To Help France – FG

The Federal Government has dismissed allegation that it formed Lakurawa to aid France in fighting Niger Republic.

Naija News reports that the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, clarified this in an interview with France 24.

Idris said the terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), have already been defeated by the military, stressing that they do not pose significant challenges to the country.

“I mean, they’ve been largely dissipated. They’ve ran into the bushes coming to take some soft targets. We’re not saying that we have 100% exterminated Boko Haram. But I think that we’ve degraded Boko Haram significantly for them to pose any kind of significant challenge for us as a country,” he said.

Speaking on Nigerians becoming poorer than in the last 10 years, the Minister stated that the economy has been growing under President Bola Tinubu’s government.

“The 1st quarter of 2024, we saw the GDP moving from 2.3 percent to 3.84 and we are already begin to see indication that it will go further up, so yes we have this decline in the last decade but also seen some movement of upward and I think it is getting better,” he stated.

Reacting to coups in some West African countries, and if Nigeria was worried the country could experience a coup, Idris explained that Nigeria has developed strong democratic institutions.

“We don’t have that fear; we have fairly strong democratic institutions in our country. We’ve been running a democracy now. In the next two months, we will be 26 years old. So fairly we are getting stronger, the institutions are becoming more institutionalized and we don’t have that fear. Of course, coups are not desirable. We don’t want them to happen anywhere. We encourage people to go with democratic that is the way to go,” he added.