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?
