Information minister Labaran
Maku declined comment on
Wednesday on the talks, citing
government instructions not to
discuss the issue.
Since launching an insurgency
against the government in 2009
with the avowed aim of turning
all or part of religiously-mixed
Nigeria into an Islamic state,
Boko Haram has killed hundreds
of people in near daily gun and
bomb attacks.
“We are telling the government
to understand that if it is not
ready to embrace sharia (Islamic
law) and the Koran as the
guiding book from which the
laws of the land derive, there
shall be no peace,” the sect’s
spokesman Abu Qaqa said in a
written statement in the
northeast city of Maiduguri, the
heart of the rebellion.
Boko Haram has replaced
militancy in the creeks of the oil-
producing Niger Delta as the
biggest security threat to Nigeria,
Africa’s top energy producer. A
flurry of efforts to start talks
followed accusations early this
year that President Goodluck
Jonathan was treating the crisis
too narrowly as a security issue.
But attempts at dialogue are
complicated by Boko Haram’s
shadowy nature and the fact
there sometimes appears to be
more than one faction. The main
one, led by Abubakar Shekau, has
never shown any overt interest
in dialogue.
Qaqa also threatened media
houses, recalling the sect’s dual
bomb attack on local newspaper
ThisDay in the capital Abuja and
northern city of Kaduna in April
that killed five people.
“They should understand that for
us there is no difference
between those fighting with
arms and with the pen,” he said.
FAILED TALKS
A group of governors from
Nigeria’s largely Muslim north set
up a committee on Wednesday
tasked with trying to reach out
to the Islamists. The committee is
chaired by Bagangida Aliyu, the
governor of Niger state, which
has been plagued by insecurity.
It would aim to “get to the root
of the security challenges and …
dialogue with any identified
groups with a view to
negotiating the way out of the
menace,” it said on Wednesday.
However, the outcome of any
such initiative remains uncertain.
Though Boko Haram’s anger is
directed towards the southern
Christian-dominated central
government, it also rails against
the northern elites, whom it
regards as corrupt and
unIslamic.
The closest the militants have
come to talks with the
government was in March, when
a former ally of Boko Haram’s
founder Mohammed Yusuf, who
was killed in police custody in
2009, called Datti Ahmed
attempted to establish links.
The talks fell apart within days.
“Ever since that attempt at
dialogue was aborted there has
not been any move for dialogue
that we agreed till date,” Abu
Qaqa said in Thursday’s
statement.
The group has been weakened
by recent arrests and the deaths
of senior figures, analysts say,
and has not managed to launch a
massively deadly coordinated
attack since one that killed 186
people in Kano in January,
though it remains a lethal force.
The sect claimed responsibility
for violence in Jos, in Nigeria’s
volatile ‘Middle Belt’, that killed 63
people last month, although
security forces blamed local
ethnic rivalries.
Qaqa rejected a report in a U.S.
newspaper that government
officials had met a Boko Haram
commander called Abu
Mohammed in Saudi Arabia,
denying the man even existed.
“We’ve heard about those who
go about using our names in
order to collect huge sums of
money from the government. We
are warning you,” he said.
Source: Daily Times

Interesting

gen gen!!

When will the fG realize that if these folks are all about islamizing the nation, dialogue is baseless. only decisive action will do...of course we know that the presidency is incapable of that so...na siddon look we dey.