It was President
Muhammadu Buhari’s veiled sympathy for Boko Haram that found expression in his
slouching through the murky water of proposing to dialogue with the murderous
bandits. This having failed to resonate with the citizens, the government is
flailing toward the option of granting amnesty to Boko Haram members. But
neither dialogue nor amnesty is the appropriate response to Boko Haram now. The
government is propelled onto the path of offering amnesty because it has
reached its wits’ end as regards the insurgents. It is now confronted with the
stark futility of its triumphalism over what it dubbed a technical defeat of
the killers.
Instead of contemplating amnesty, the
government should declare that it has been defeated by Boko Haram, technically
or otherwise. A follow-up to such a declaration is that the government should
award the contract for a fight against Boko Haram to contractors to prosecute.
Such contractors should be foreigners. For, we need our doubts to be cleared
about the invincibility or otherwise of Boko Haram through foreigners who do
not sympathise with them fighting them. A complicity of events since the
emergence of Buhari as the president has rendered it difficult for us not to
align with the suspicion that Boko Haram enjoys official sympathy. Or was it
not state sympathy that would make Boko Haram to invade Dapchi in a convoy of
trucks, abduct 110 schoolgirls and return them in the same manner without any
obstruction from security operatives and other citizens?
What Boko Haram needs is not amnesty. After
all, they have not asked for this. A proposal for amnesty ought to have been
preceded by its would-be recipient showing convincing remorse for the carnage
it has inflicted on both citizens and foreigners and the deracination of communities
and property that are causing billions to rebuild. But this not the case. Thus,
while the government is contemplating amnesty for them, Boko Haram members are
continuing with its pillage and abduction and killing of citizens.
In the absence of dialogue, we do not know the grievances of Boko Haram, except
that of the well-worn killing of its leader Mohammed Yusuf in 2009 when the
group was still not unbound. And if they have been unwilling so that the
citizens could identify their actual grievances and resolve them, how would
they accept amnesty? As we have been reminded, what the Buhari government is
contemplating is tantamount to offering Osama Bin Laden amnesty despite his
lethal mockery of the security apparatus of the United
States simply because he had defied capture and his Al
Qaeda was still unleashing terrorism on the citizens of the U.S.
Yes, we appreciate the huge sacrifices of our
soldiers in the course of the battle against Boko Haram. Against odds such as a
lack of weapons and an alleged searing official betrayal, they have persisted
in denying the terrorists the boast that they continue to hold on to vast
swaths of the nation’s territory. Many of them have paid the supreme price.
Yet, the Buhari government’s response to Boko Haram gives the impression that it has not done all that it could to deal with the issue. For, while the
government gives the impression that Boko Haram members are ghosts that are not
known to it, the backers of the president give the impression that the group’s
leaders are familiar to them.
They know why they are fighting and what could
be done to appease them. Among these is Ango Abdullahi who claims to know so
much about the Boko Haram leaders. He tells us that the Boko Haram leadership
is not made up of some unlettered charlatans who are really opposed to Western
education. He says that some of the leaders of the group are people who have
gone the whole hog of Western education to acquire doctoral degrees. Again,
Mrs. Aisha Wakil, otherwise known as Mama Boko Haram refers to them as 'our
errant children' who should be forgiven. How did these private citizens get to
know so much about Boko Haram where the government and its security agents have
failed? How do they interact with them such that their communications escape
the radar of our security operatives? Should these people who know so much
about Boko Haram not also know the source of their funding?
We are thus left with the impression that
Buhari as president has continued his tolerance of Boko Haram while he was
outside Aso Rock. In this regard, we must not forget that Buhari was among
northern leaders who declared that the efforts by the then President Goodluck
Jonathan to tame Boko Haram such as a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa in 2013 were tantamount to declaring war on the entire people of the
northern region. The option of amnesty offers the fatuous appeal that would
bring an end to the crisis. But beyond amnesty and the deployment of weapons
and troops in the battlefield, Buhari has not shown a clear resolve to defeat
Boko Haram. Or why has he failed to declare it a terrorist group against the
wise counsel of the citizens? Now, the Buhari government unabashedly tells us
that it engaged in back-channel deal with Boko Haram to free the Dapchi girls
except one, Leah Sharibu. The nation is waiting for the government to also use
this back channel to free her.
The government is falling for the amnesty trap
because it has not been able to identify who deserves it. The advocates of
amnesty for Boko Haram like Buhari often latch on to the notion that after all
militants in the Niger Delta were granted amnesty. They are paid allowances
after they have given up their guns. But lost on them is the tragic conflation
of Boko Haram as unconscionable murderers and Niger Delta as freedom fighters.
While the former are actuated by misbegotten religious bigotry, the latter are
motivated by a quest to regain freedom from an oppressive state that would
brook no scruples in exploiting their oil resources while leaving them
impoverished.
It is this iniquitous fluidity in the identification of who qualifies for amnesty
that would also make the government to think of granting amnesty to killer
Fulani herdsmen. Amnesty is thus stripped of all its virtues and only stands as
a conduit for corruption. But the Buhari government might as well liberalise
this brand of corruption and make as its recipients the Shiites whose leader
Ibraheem El-zakzaky is being incarcerated despite courts’ orders for him to be
released. The government should also extend amnesty to the looters of the
treasury so that it can concentrate on its responsibilities of governance
instead of running from pillar to post to draw up lists of looters that remain
ludicrous as long as members of the Buhari government are not on them. It
should not be only the members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC)
who should exclusively enjoy this amnesty as it is the case now.
But the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
might have to inconsolably rue its fate for being decimated before the
liberalisation of amnesty. But in the spirit of Buhari’s amnesty, he should
apologise to IPOB’s members for unfairly treating them. Then Buhari should
remove the tag of terrorist from IPOB and unban it. After all, the charges of
mass murder and destruction of property and sexual predations hanging on Boko
Haram cannot by any means be associated with IPOB. The IPOB’s members were only
asking for a separation from a federation in which they felt that oppression
and a lack of opportunities were their grim lot.
Buhari is free to sympathise with Boko Haram.
He is free to make them enjoy freedom and repay him with massive support for
his 2019 presidential bid. However he wants to attain these warped objectives
must not negate the interests of the nation and its citizens. Boko Haram must
not be given amnesty that would make it escape paying for its egregious crimes
against the state and its citizens.
*Dr. Onomuakpokpo is
on the Editorial Board of The Guardian
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