Dialogue With Boko Haram, UAD Pleads

Pro-democracy group, United Action for Democracy, UAD has called on the federal government to engage the leadership of the Islamic fundamentalist group, Boko Haram in a dialogue before it wreaks more havoc on the nation.

The Islamic fundamentalist group last Thursday claimed responsibility for the bomb blast which rocked the police headquarters in Abuja.

Making this appeal at a press conference in Lagos, General Secretary, UAD, Comrade Wale Balogun, blamed the attack on lack of security consciousness by the police.

“It is imperative to fish out the leadership and sponsors of Boko Haram and engage them in serious and constructive dialogue to lay down their weapons and not to make a tactical error that they can be easily dislodged through force,” Comrade Balogun stated at the conference with the theme: ‘Nigeria As A Failed Nation: Dialogue Not Bombs.’

The UAD scribe also blamed the attack on the self-centredness and insensitivity of governments at all levels to the plight of the governed.

“We cannot but liaise with organizations with similar interest to fight the unjust kerosene scarcity and covert plot to increase the price by the federal government.

“If President Goodluck Jonathan’s government is people-friendly as claimed, he should invoke his power to bring down the price of a litre of kerosene to N50 like he did with the price of cement a month ago,” he said.

He urged the government to make concrete effort to train and retrain security operatives, particularly the police in the art of modern policing, adding, “buying military hardware without a corresponding motivation of the rank and file and adequate knowledge will be grossly useless.”

In his own comment, Comrade Toyin Raheem described as disheartening and sheer insensitivity the claim by some governors that payment of minimum wage to workers will prevent them from implementing their programmes.

He declared that it is criminal for any governor to refuse to pay the minimum wage to workers when they were part of the negotiation with the leadership of labour before the passage of the wage bill into law.

—Alatise Kehinde