Urge
Jonathan To Dialogue With Group
AREWA leaders have risen with one voice in support of the Sultan
of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III’s call for total amnesty for
members of the Boko Haram sect to end the insecurity in the North.
Sultan Abubakar had urged President Goodluck Jonathan to use
the opportunity of his visit to Maiduguri, the Boko Haram enclave where
the sect over the
years launched their attack against the authorities and innocent
Nigerians, to grant them amnesty for them to lay down their arms.
Sultan Abubakar said on Tuesday at the Council meeting of Emirs in
the north, while appealing to President Goodluck Jonathan before his trip
to Maduguri: “We want to use this opportunity to call on the
government, especially Mr. President, to see how he can declare total amnesty
to all combatants without thinking twice. That will make any other person
who picks up arms to be termed as a criminal. If the amnesty is declared, the
majority of those young men who have been
running would come out and embrace that amnesty and some of them
have already come out because we have read some of the stories in the
papers.
“Even if it is one person and he denounces terrorism, it is the
duty of government to accept that one person and see how he can be used to
reach others. Whether it is true or not, the government should accept that
person first, evaluate him and see whether he is genuine or fake.”
Jonathan however turned down the demand, saying that
amnesty cannot be granted to ghosts or faceless people.
But, in reaction to the emerging controversy on amnesty for Boko
Haram sect, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has asked President
Jonathan to consider ways of ending their insurgency which has continued
to endanger the north and the country in general.
ACF’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, in a text
message to some journalists in Kaduna Friday, said:“When you ask ACF to react
to Sultan’s suggestion for general amnesty and the president is saying that
there cannot be dialogue and amnesty for a faceless group, I wonder what you
want me to say.
“I do not think the Sultan meant amnesty without conditions.
Consider this is not a conventional war in which type the use of force has not
been successful, hence the clamour for dialogue.
“And because leaders of Boko Haram may be afraid to show
themselves for dialogue out of fear, the Sultan may be suggesting an offer of
amnesty in the hope of encouraging the leaders of the Boko Haram to come
out for the dialogue without fear for their lives. That is to say, the Sultan may
be saying in his own way that the government needs to go beyond rhetoric and do
something practical in order to make the leaders of the sect show their
faces.
“Mr. president may be right when he says the government cannot
dialogue with a faceless group. Yet, he cannot say it is not the responsibility
of the government to find a way of bringing leaders of the sect into the
negotiation table, however difficult”.
In another statement signed by Mr. Sani, the Northern elders said:
“The attention of Arewa Consultative Forum has been drawn to the allegations on
the floor of the Senate that 83 per cent of oil blocs are owned by Northerners;
and that there should be application of federal character in the allocation of
oil blocs.
Source: Guardian
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