Femi Fani-Kayode, former Aviation minister, has described the statement by President Muhammadu Buhari that the Nigerian Army was “soft” on the Biafrans and “restrained” during the civil war, as a lie from the pit of hell.
Buhari had during a meeting with the Red Cross Society at the presidential villa said that the Nigerian Army was soft on Biafrans during the Civil War.
However, Fani-Kayode, in an opinion piece on Wednesday, accused the President of telling wicked and despicable lies about the Igbo during the civil war.
He maintained that nothing was more painful to victims of mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide than the denial by its orchestrators and perpetrators that the massacre never took place.
The former minister, while raising some unanswered questions during the civil war, wondered where Buhari’s humanity and sense of decency is.
He wrote, ”One of the most wicked and despicable lies that President Muhammadu Buhari has ever told is that the Nigerian Army was “soft” on the Biafrans and “restrained” during the civil war, implying that our soldiers did not indulge in genocide and mass murder.
”A few questions will suffice. Was the Asaba massacre in which thousands of innocent and defenceless young boys and old men were slaughtered an act of restraint?
”Or was the killing of two million innocent and defenceless Biafran civilians and the premeditated and contrived starving to death of one million innocent Biafran children an act of restraint?
”For God sake where is our humanity? Where is our sense of decency, our sensitivity and our sense of remorse?
”Must we lie about our history and must we always deny the truth and attempt to revise it? No wonder they banned the teaching of history in our schools. We simply have too much to hide!
”We forget that without contrition there can be no remorse, without remorse there can be no repentance, without repentance there can be no forgiveness and without forgiveness there can be no truth, reconciliation or progress.
”Justice and decency demands that we must collectively get off our sanctimonious and all-knowing high horse and stop behaving like the infallible and almighty conquerors that we think we are.
“Whether we are willing to admit it or not, the fact of the matter is that what we did to the Biafrans during the civil war was as bad as what Hitler’s Nazis and the German people did to the Jews during the Second World War. And had the civil war gone on for another three years it would have been worse!”
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