UK, not Nigeria is the breeding ground for Islamist terrorists: Nobel laureate

London, Feb 7(ANI): Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has said that UK, not Nigeria, should be on the United States' watch-list of countries deemed to be incubators of Islamist terrorism.

Soyinka was responding to a question about what he thought about Nigeria being placed on the US terrorism watch-list.

The listing - which puts Nigeria into a club whose members include Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen - followed the failed attack by the Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man who boarded a plane with a bomb in his underpants.

"I believe it was irrational to point the finger of suspicion at Nigeria because this young man - the so-called Christmas Day bomber - was not radicalised in Nigeria. Everything we know about Abdulmutallab suggests that it happened in London, where he went to university," The Times quoted Soyinka, as saying.

"The same is true of the shoe bomber, Richard Reid. And of the extremists who bombed the London Underground and the buses in July 2005. The terrorists who primed a car found outside a London nightclub in 2007 with petrol containers, gas canisters and nails were based in Britain. If Nigeria qualifies for a place on the US list of terrorist countries then, admit it, Britain is overqualified," he added.

He further believes that Britain has created a breeding ground for religious terrorists.

"I have a number of Muslim friends in Nigeria who have expressed fears that their sons, who are studying at British universities, might be caught up in Islamic fundamentalism. They are worried about the company they are keeping and by changes in their attitudes.heir children are becoming intolerant of other religions, developing a kind of holier-than-thou stance even towards their fellow Muslims," Soyinka said.

"Holier, or purer, than thou - that sums up the mental conditioning. It is the beginning of a religious psychopathy that ends in bombs in underpants. One friend with a son at university in the northeast of England has not - yet - pulled his son out, but he is certainly keeping a watchful eye on him. He has reason to be worried," he added. (ANI)