Ayo Oritsejafor has debunked the claims that poverty was the major
cause for the emergence of the Boko Haram sect, that it was aggrieved
bitter persons who lost their electoral bid that are responsible for
the creation of the sect.
Saying this at the opening of a six-days meeting of the Niger Delta
Christian Leaders Forum in Calabar, Cross River State, he said
sponsors of the Islamic sect want to divide the country along the
religious line.
Boko Haram is a fundamentalist Islamic religious group created and
sponsored by selfish politicians, who want to create political space
for themselves and in the vent of failure to achieve that, resort to
dividing Nigeria along religious line, he further stated.
He said: "Boko Haram is fueled by extreme religious ideology and not
poverty because they have not come out to tell us that they are
killing people because they are poor or hungry."
Oritsejafor said the claim that Boko Haram was a creation of poverty
was a blatant lie by those sponsoring the organisation or its
apologists just to mislead Nigerians and the world.
"The leader of Boko Harm is from a very wealthy family background and
even that young man who wanted to blow up an American airline, his
father was a retired Permanent Secretary and one of the richest men in
Nigeria. The claim that the fundamentalist group was created by
poverty is a false claim by its sponsors and apologists," he said.