15th April, 2013
Nigerians were jolted last Thursday when Abubakar Shekau, the purported leader of Boko Haram in an audio message rejected the Federal Government proposed amnesty programme. In that message not only did Shekau mock the deal, he said it was government that should be granted pardon for its ‘atrocities’ against Muslims.
This did not come as a surprise because the members of Boko Haram never asked for amnesty from the Federal Government. And they have not at any point in time given the impression that they are a peace-loving group, given the stringent conditions they had given the government.
It sounds preposterous that despite the fact that Shekau has called the Federal Government’s bluff, it is still sheepishly bent on carrying on with the deal as some Northern leaders demanded. This goes a long way to show that the amnesty deal is based on false premises.
There is no need for the deal in the first place because of many reasons every right thinking Nigerian knows. Can the government identify the members of Boko Haram, who Jonathan once referred to as ghosts? Is the so-called cause they are fighting for a legitimate and attainable one in a secular state like Nigeria? Who actually deserves compensation, as the amnesty deal entails? Is it Boko Haram or the family of innocent Nigerians that they have killed in cold blood?
It is only in a country like Nigeria that is scandalously divided along ethnic and religious lines that some people would demand for amnesty because the late President Umaru Yar’Adua granted amnesty to the Niger Delta militants. Not only is that reason parochial but it is irrational. The conditions that spawned the Niger Delta militants is not the same with what produced Boko Haram.
If the Federal Government grants Boko Haram amnesty, it is by so doing setting a very bad precedent. Other ethnic militant groups would suddenly sprout from different parts of the country and demand for their own amnesty deal. If Jonathan capitulates to the demands of the Northern leaders, he is only sending a wrong signal as a weak leader who is incapable of handling the Boko Haram crisis. Many Nigerians also believe Jonathan favours the amnesty deal as a sure means to placate the north and make his second term bid a foregone conclusion.
The amnesty deal is wrong from the outset. It is another way that Jonathan and his cohorts in government want to waste public funds. At the end of the day, if the deal is struck, government would allocate billions of naira to the project and compensate everybody randomly, whether they are members of Boko Haram or not, just like what happened in the Niger Delta.
Rather than granting amnesty to a group that does not want or deserve it, the federal government should think of how to stop the violence and provide security for Nigerians. How are we sure that if government grants amnesty to Boko Haram that the same group or another sect would not continue killing innocent Nigerians?