According to Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, every state in Nigeria is safe.
Mohammed made the comment in reaction to a circular issued by the US Department of State saying that 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states are not safe.
“We are in Nigeria. How can we believe the claim that 20 states in Nigeria are not safe. That is not correct. There is no state in Nigeria that is not safe today,” Mohammed said on Thursday, August 11, 2016, while meeting with a delegation from the Association of Tourism Practitioners of Nigeria in Abuja.
“Is there any week they are not killing people in the U.S., by either shooting in schools or driveways or people committing suicide or mass bombing? How many of these stories do their media celebrate? If they want to tell their people not to come to Nigeria, it is not for us to help them propagate it,” he added.
The Department of States’ directive was contained in an updated travel warning released on Wednesday, August 3, 2016.
The US warned its citizens to stay away from the states in question due to cases of armed robbery, kidnapping and terrorism.
The 20 states which were listed are: Adamawa, Borno, Yobe, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Niger, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto and Zamfara.
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