WITH the constitution last week of an amnesty committee, it appears President Goodluck Jonathan is on the verge of yielding to pressure on the issue of granting amnesty for Boko Haram. The President’s action is already being considered a capitulation to terror.
If eventually Jonathan goes ahead to grant state pardon to terrorists with all the financial rewards that are being contemplated, he will be taking a serious risk, the consequences of which may not be apparent to him now.
In the Nigerian context, amnesty assumes a different meaning from what is generally known of being asked to renounce one’s wayward ways in order to be forgiven; it means showering criminals with public money. If amnesty to Boko Haram takes this trajectory, as was the case with the equally condemnable amnesty granted to the Niger Delta militants by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, then it will be sending a powerful but wrong message to other criminal groups that they can take up arms against their country or unleash mayhem on any part of its territory, knowing full well that their actions, instead of attracting condemnation and lawful retribution, will be rewarded with lots of money and lucrative contracts.
That is in the long run. But in the short run, there is no guarantee that amnesty now will solve the current seemingly intractable security problem in the country, as the proponents of amnesty would want everybody to believe. Amnesty for the Niger Delta militants was a very straightforward thing because the government had tried to assuage their conditions, which bordered on the perceived inequitable distribution of the resources from the oil and gas oozing out of their soil. Their demands had been economic. But, even then, pardon has not brought absolute peace to the Niger Delta. In the case of the core Boko Haram, the demands have always been religious, a narrow, exclusive variant of Islam.
In all of its dispatches, Boko Haram had made it clear that the only recipe for peace is the comprehensive implementation of its own interpretation of Sharia system (Islamic mode of government) in the country. The group once made a derisive remark about “fake negotiators who are pretending that they are in talks with the Federal Government on our behalf. These people are collecting large sums of money from the government under false pretences.” Who are those that will negotiate on their behalf this time? Are they the same “fake negotiators” they called attention to last year? The terror group was also quoted as saying, “Christians in Nigeria should accept Islam, that is true religion, or they will never know peace.”
It is unheard of for a viable, functioning state to reward criminals and mass murderers as the Nigerian government has been doing. Not even in the failed state of Somalia does the government desperately beg its al-Shabaab terrorists with offers of money, dialogue and contracts. Then, how does amnesty translate to justice for terror victims – the dead, the maimed and the traumatised?

What essentially drives terrorism is local and elite sympathy for its misguided cause. Government and religious groups must shelve sentiments and mobilise the population against terrorist ideology and theology. Some religious leaders wrongly assume that money and pardon will persuade highly-motivated terrorists to drop Jihad and the culture of death; they are fatally wrong. It has not worked anywhere and some of the most active international terrorists today were once incarcerated and later released by various countries. For instance, 11 out of Saudi Arabia’s 85 most wanted terrorists named in 2009 were released from the detent

This article is quite lengthy but worth reading. its the most objective i have seen on Boko Haram. My people, amnesty for Boko Haram will not be "money for hand, back for ground".

So glad it never happened

enlady:
This article is quite lengthy but worth reading. its the most objective i have seen on Boko Haram. My people, amnesty for Boko Haram will not be "money for hand, back for ground".

As much as I dnt support amnesty for BH, we cnt overlook d fact dt northern Nigeria, HIGHLY improverished and educationally backward.


D problem of Nigeria remains her leaders






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Amnesty for Bokoharam is very wrong.