Minister of Information, Labaran Maku has blamed the exacerbation of the Boko Haram insurgency on the combination of religion with politics in Nigeria.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday, at the launch of a training manual produced by the United Nations (UN) on conflict prevention and countering violent extremism in the country through inter-cultural dialogue and education, Maku said mutual distrust and acrimony had been festered by politicians seeking political offices through the injection of religion in their campaign propaganda. This had often resulted in extremism and violence, Maku said.
“Once you bring religion into politics, the way we have done in northern Nigeria, it is only a matter of time that you will arrive at a point where groups will go beyond control.
“I think that we must re-examine the way we are relating to each other, particularly when it comes to politics and this has increasingly become the case in this political dispensation.
“In addition to the fact that there is the rise of extremism, ideologically through terrorism as we have seen in the last 10, 15 years, the question of religion and politics in our country, manipulating it for either political office or for advantage in power sharing, it has become too prominent and that prominence is beginning to simmer down the line in the polity.
“So I hope that this manual would not only be for people involved in training but I think it should be distributed to all politicians, particularly in the northern part of the country,” he said.
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