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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Nigeria: FG's Boko Haram Amnesty Programme |
| 2013-04-21 |
| [ALLAFRICA] The government has finally tilted towards granting amnesty to the Boko Haram ... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality... . Our present government as we all know is in a perpetual flux and constant change towards the directions whichever the wind blows us to or the tidal waves lands us to. The first mistake we made towards the issue of amnesty as a country is considering particularly economic factor and others like the political factor centrifugal to the amnesty solution for Boko Haram. While the Niger Deltans rebelled for developmental, economic and environmental problems and complete resource control, they also benefit economically and finance their atrocities from the operation of illegal refineries, oil bunkering, illegal taxation of companies and individuals, kidnapping etc. But Boko Haram have no clear economic demands to be provided through amnesty or any dialogue, just as they don't have clear sources of finance within the country for their weapons and operations. And their religiosity is not tenable because they are not backed by any known sound Islamic principles but its opposites and excuses and excesses of a sworn fault seeker which amount to no objective at all but to create confusion and insecurity and a bad name for Islam to hang it. The second difference between the two is while the Niger Delta snuffies have full support of their leaders and fellow Niger Deltans, the Boko Haram are disdainfully rejected and never supported by any known entity in Borno or Yobe state. And this was when they were operating in the open and were really a group of untrained young, illiterate and poor misguided and brainwashed members of the society. After their dismantling by the army in 2009, there was a significant paradigmatic shift in membership and operational strategy, displaying higher sophistication in training, finance and co-ordination, and with considerable recruitment of more non Mohammedans into the operational network of the Boko Haram. The thousand that flocked behind Muhammad Yusuf at that time are not faceless and are up to date known for they are our brothers, sisters, relatives and friends but seem to be from all indications totally disoriented from the second phase of the Boko Haram hullaballoo. These suggest a limited group of trained snipers and explosive physicists trumpeting their heinous acts in the name of the earlier hoodwinked Islamist that carried the first guns. The Niger Delta Militants were not in hiding in that fashion and were therefore able to come forward to accept the amnesty and benefit from the accompanying boom it brought to them. The Boko Haram of today will never be able to trust any government and come out for any amnesty or dialogue, because amnesty or dialogue does not tally in any way with their mission or be able to placate their grievances that are never coherent or reinforce their believe for agreeable and better days for all in terms of justice, economy and politics which are not their objectives. They are only a bunch of pipers under the dictate of their payers. Although there have never been problems without solutions, an amnesty or dialogue with Boko Haram, even if staged, is like a pact with the devil where both sides would be rangers in the shortest time. The only option open to government is to re-strengthen its security outfits particularly the Customs and Immigrations services, alongside the police. The Nigerian Immigration service in particular must be up to date with the movement in and out of both foreigners and Nigerians alike while at the same time being thoroughly vigilant on the activities of foreigners residing in Nigeria. The Nigerian Customs must be on red alert to what is imported and exported. And the search should not be limited to weapons alone but full and all round information about all goods because snuffies do transfer most of their finance in form of goods that are legal not liquid cash. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... painful to the lives of Nigerians is the fact that it is debatable who is less corrupt between our customs operatives and the police or any other Nigerian institution, including the top brass as the executive, judiciary and legislature. |
| Posted by:Fred |