The release of list of names of 77 Nigerians arrested by the FBI on fraud related offences has rekindled an already exiting tribal/ethnic war among Nigerians.
Pointing out that the list has names of people from mainly one ethnic group, many Nigerians are attempting to remove the name of the country from the list and tag it with the name of the ethnic group.
This caused President Muhammadu Buhari’s Special Assistant on New Media, Bashir Ahmad to react on his Twitter page, warning against any ethnic classification of the Nigerians involved in the developing case.
He wrote: “Nigeria is one, FBI and American media didn’t call them by any name but Nigerians, and they are right. They are Nigerians who brought shame to their country.”
The presidential aide also cautioned and responded to some Twitter users trying to bring ethnic and political implications into the arrest.
“Sani, we shouldn’t generalize and tag all our Igbo brothers as criminals or be calling them #IgboYahooBoys as the case would have been if majority of those 77 criminals were to be of the Hausa-Fulani tribes. They are Nigerians and of course their actions remain condemned by all.”
“This shouldn’t be a PDP/APC issue, it’s NGR’s issue, but since you decided to play it that way, then King Asa has this for you, if the availability of jobs will stop them from doing Yahoo why didn’t they stop when they got to the US where it’s a supposedly land of milk and honey?”
