As an Igbo proverb says, the death that will take the life of a dog does not allow it to perceive the smell of faeces. In like manner, this is no less the case with the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan vis-à-vis its seemingly crass attempt at toying with the obviously unnecessary question of amnesty for members of the Boko Haram sect. Unfortunately, the members of Boko Haram have not only wasted innocent lives but also have destroyed properties worth billions of naira, and have continued to progress in the same direction with reckless abandon. In defence of all these calamities, as we are made to understand, they desperately desire the imposition of an Islamic system on the Nigerian state or, at the minimum, a full Islamisation of Northern region. And if not for anything, at least so far, the Boko Haram members have repeatedly professed and reiterated their Jihad mission without pretence. Of course, there is nobody in Nigeria who does not clearly know that this is where we are, which accounts for why the sect’s operations have been so far limited to the Northern region. With all the foregoing in mind, one wonders what else the government of President Jonathan wants to find out or invent as consisting in the grievances of the sect. Or, worse still, what else do the government and the sympathisers of the Boko Haram members want to formulate and use as a basis for compensating or thanking them with the equivalent of the Niger Delta amnesty treat for perpetrating, after all these years, a series of crimes against humanity.

Curiously, advocates of amnesty for the Boko Haram are wont to tell those who care to listen that the government would do well by considering this option as a viable strategy for brining to an end the violence in the North, yet they neither told us nor emphasised what would become the fate of all the innocent people who had been killed and maimed by the sect, aside from properties worth billions of naira and other valuables that had got lost in the orgy of violence.

Indeed, the loss is monumental. From the magnitude of the loss of human and material resources recorded in the wake of the bombings of churches, schools, United Nations’ building, motor parks, police stations, military and prison facilities to the image crisis and international embarrassment created for and suffered by Nigeria and Nigerians all because of the activities of Boko Haram, there can hardly be little to worry about. Yet, in the face of all this, the Northern leaders and Boko Haram sympathisers are averse to recount and reckon with the agonies of many families and/or bring good judgment to bear on the sensibilities of the public while clamouring that their children be considered for special pardon and possibly be showered with a treat for killing and maiming people anyhow as well as destroying both privately and publicly-owned properties without giving a tinker’s damn.

While it is quite ironical that at a time the South African court has convicted and sentenced Henry Okah, the leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta to 24 years of imprisonment over his alleged role in the October 1, 2010 bombing near the Eagle Square in Abuja, the same government of President Jonathan that gave its imprimatur for the successful prosecution of Okah is here setting up an amnesty committee for Boko Haram. It is quite a pity that whereas other serious nations of the world are busy striving to help Nigeria discourage her citizenry onshore and off-shore from having anything to do with both the actus reus and mens rea of terrorism as evidenced in the sentencing of Abdul Mutallab and Okah by the US and South African courts respectively, the Nigerian government itself is apparently pursuing and/or attempting to test run policies that will definitely breed more diehard terrorists and encourage their exportation to countries and peoples of high frustration potential. Indeed, like Chinua Achebe would reason in his treatise – The Trouble with Nigeria — Nigeria is a nation for adventurers.

Onyiorah Chiduluemije Paschal



http://www.punchng.com/opinion/letters/no-to-amnesty-for-boko-haram/