NOVEMBER 24, 2012 BY DAVID ATTAH, KADUNA
President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, Mallam Shehu Sani
A Northern Activist and Leader of the Civil Rights Congress, Mallam Shehu Sani, has berated President Goodluck Jonathan over his comment that the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram is faceless.
Jonathan had said during a presidential media chat on Sunday that his government could not dialogue with the Boko Haram because the sect was faceless.
But Sani faulted the President’s position in an interview with our correspondent in Kaduna. He described Jonathan’s view on the military attack on Odi, Bayelsa State in 2000 and Boko Haram as contradictory.
He insisted that a dialogue between Boko Haram and the Datti Ahmed-led group on behalf of the government earlier this year was an indication that the sect was not faceless.
The President of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria, Dr. Datti Ahmed, had earlier in the year led a peace talk between the government and the sect. However, he later withdrew from the talk because of what he called government’s insincerity.
In Sept. 2011, Sani facilitated a meeting between the sect and former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
But Baba Kura Fugu, an in-law of Boko Haram founder, Mohammed Yusuf, who received Obasanjo in his Maiduguri residence on Sept. 15, 2011, was shot dead 48 hours after the former President’s visit.
Sani thus said that Jonathan had clearly proved to be incapable of tackling the problem of violence in the country.
He said the fact that there was a dialogue between the sect and the Ahmed group at the middle of the year was also an indication that Boko Haram was not faceless as Jonathan claimed.
Besides, he noted that the President contradicted himself when he objected to the use of force in Odi and adopted the same force in quelling the Boko Haram insurgence in the North.
He said that rather than saying that the sect is faceless, “the government of Jonathan is faceless,” as well.
The CRC boss recalled that when President Umaru Yar’Adua was alive, he unfolded an agenda that solved the problem of the Niger Delta militancy.
He wondered why Jonathan would adopt the strategy of force on Boko Haram and yet detest the use of force in Odi.
Sani said, “If Boko Haram is a faceless group then who is perpetrating the bombings and the killings? Can they be said to be ghosts or spirits? The fact that there was a dialogue process led by Ahmed this year was a clear indication that the group is not faceless.
“What is clear is that we are having a faceless government, where the people cannot find them in their hour of need. So, rather than say that Boko Haram is faceless, it’s better to say that the government of Jonathan is faceless.
“President Jonathan had contradicted himself by clearly condemning and denouncing the application of military force in Odi, while on the other hand, he believes it’s the only solution to ending the Boko Haram insurgence in the North.
“The truth of the matter is that Boko Haram had killed more innocent people than the security men. The military and the police have killed more innocent people than they have killed members of Boko Haram. The innocent people are the victims of the insurgence and victims of security apparatus of the state.
“What we should understand clearly is that if you are faced with a problem of insurgency, there are two things that you can do. You either apply force or you opt for dialogue. The use of force could end insurgency as we have seen in Sri-lanka and the Islamic Salvation Front. But dialogue can also end a process of violence as we have seen that it is in the process of ending the guerilla insurgency in Columbia with the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council’s talk. The process is being adopted on the renewed fighting between the Palestinian and the Israeli.
“But what has denied Nigeria the opportunity for peace and what has sustained this violence in the Northern part of the country can be attributed to a number of factors. First, is the fact that silence and fear have sustained the insurgency. Second is that the government has proved incapable and impotent in terms of tackling the insurgency, and third is that security contractors and defence entrepreneurs are making money and have turned the insurgency into a big business. There is also the lack of ideas and a decision on the part of the government, as well as the understanding of the situation towards bringing it to an end.
“As far as I am concerned, Jonathan is simply contradicting himself. He is opposed to the use of force and application of force in his own part of the country where he comes from while he believes that it is the only strategy that can be adopted to end the insurgency in that part of the country where he does not come from.
“When President Umaru Musa Ya’Adua was alive, what he did was to study the situation and unfold an agenda that was completely different from that of Obasanjo which brought the problem to an end.
Meanwhile, a northern socio-political group, the Arewa Consultative Forum, has cautioned the Federal Government about the dialogue offer by the Boko Haram.
The ACF National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Anthony Sani, in an interview with our correspondent, said that the forum had not reacted to the recent offer of dialogue by Boko Haram because the issue was not clear.
He said, “Inasmuch as the forum welcomes dialogue as a viable option, there is the need for caution about who makes the offer.
“I remember that any time Osama Bin Laden was said to have issued any release, the intelligence community of the western world took their slide rules and went to the laboratory to ascertain whether it was Bin Laden that actually spoke.”
He said that Boko Haram, which had aborted previous efforts towards a dialogue because of early leakages by the government, cannot go to the street with an offer of dialogue.
He said that the sect should embrace dialogue and lay down its arms.
The ACF spokesman stated that if Boko Haram wanted Saudi Arabia to intervene, it should approach the Saudi authorities.
Source: #Punch_News.
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