• Northern Christians oppose pardon, seek compensation
• Boko Haram’s leader okays peace deal
FAR from abating, the controversy over the necessity or otherwise of granting amnesty to members of terror group Boko Haram raged on yesterday.
While the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, urged that dialogue must be concluded before amnesty in order to achieve the desired result, the outgoing Bishop of Lagos West, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Rt. Rev. Peter Adebiyi, said that Nigeria would be wasting resources unless it hosts a sovereign national conference for the regions to determine their basis of co-existence.
On their part, Christians under the aegis of the Northern Elders Forum (NORSCEF) have opposed any discussion between the Federal Government and the members of Boko Haram on amnesty when nothing has been done for their victims.
Also, former president of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) and Chairman of Patani local council of Delta State, Dr. Chris Ekiyor, has warned that the people of Niger Delta would resist attempts to use the resources of the region to finance the proposed amnesty for Boko Haram, describing amnesty for the group as fraud.
Meanwhile, a factional leader of Boko Haram, Muhammad Marwan, has said that the members of the group were ready to lay down their arms as directed by the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) in readiness for the proposed amnesty of the Federal Government.
Marwan spoke in an interview during the Hausa Service of the Voice of America (VOA) monitored in Kaduna yesterday. He said that he was speaking on behalf of members of the Jamatul Ahlus sunnati lil daawati wal jihad, otherwise known as Boko Haram.
In an interview with journalists in Benin City yesterday, Ekiyor said there was no basis to compare the members of Boko Haram with Niger Delta agitators, who had a clear idea of attracting government’s attention to the degradation of their area by oil explorers while poverty ravaged the people. Boko Haram’s members, he said, embarked on mass killing of Nigerians and remained faceless.
Noting that 80 per cent of Boko Haram people were not Nigerians, Ekiyor said: “So if you are granting them amnesty, where will you get the resources with which you are going to reintegrate them? Is it the Niger Delta resources, our oil money, that will be used to integrate criminals and murderers in the North?”
Commenting yesterday on the crisis in parts of northern Nigeria, Anyaoku said: “Amnesty, yes, but as a result of dialogue.” In an interview with The Guardian during the commissioning of the Millennium Housing Estate, Old Secretariat, Ikeja, which was named after him by Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, Anyaoku placed dialogue before amnesty.
According to him, there would be no difficulty in identifying those to dialogue with, once there is an assurance that the group’s members who come forward would not be arrested. In a state of insurgency, according to him, one is dealing with terrorists, “so, there is the need to combine the offer of amnesty with the issue of dialogue, with the hope that the militants would respect the outcome of dialogue.”
While commending President Goodluck Jonathan for setting up a committee to look into the terms of the proposed amnesty, he said there should be commitment to whatever might be agreed upon. However, he regretted that “some people are comparing the agitation in Niger Delta with what is happening in the North.”
During an interactive session with reporters in his office yesterday, Adebiyi said that until the citizens come together to decide how best to govern the country, nothing would be achieved.
Adebiyi said: “This is what I have said several times, there is nothing you can do to save this country until the owners of their countries come together. The politicians are not the owners, those in the National Assembly are not the owners, they were sent there, but unfortunately, they are fending for themselves.
“They are enjoying themselves, earning fat salaries but cannot pay those earning N15, 000. The roads are bad and nobody cares, there is erratic power supply and 90 per cent of Nigeria’s money is being usurped by a few. There is no way Nigerians will enjoy what we want until all the ethnic groups come together to chart a course for their existence.
On amnesty for Boko Haram, the cleric said there was a great difference between the Niger Delta militants and Boko Haram, noting: “The Niger Delta militants did not go to people’s homes to kill them, they did not go to any church to kill people, they did not go to any mosque to kill people.
“They were fighting in the creeks, saying our land that is producing oil to service the country, we are not seeing the dividends. Our roads are bad, we don’t have good water, no good school, we are being deprived of our rights. I didn’t say they did not kill but they didn’t go to the extent of Boko Haram.”
The Northern Christians said that the government should ask those promoting amnesty for Boko Haram to produce the leaders of the group for dialogue with government, otherwise the campaign for amnesty by some of the Northern leaders may be a way of enriching some powerful individuals.
In a statement issued in Kaduna yesterday, the Chairman of NORSCEF, Mathew Owojaiye, said that it was unbelievable that some of the Arewa leaders were campaigning for amnesty to be granted to Boko Haram while nobody was talking about thousands of Christians in the North who were victims of the insurgency.
Owojaiye said: “Boko Haram has tried to annihilate us and our Igbo Christian brothers and now the government is talking about granting them amnesty without saying a word about the people they bombed, slaughtered and traumatized.”
He queried: “Who underdeveloped the Muslim North? It is definitely not the Jonathan Government, neither the Christians in the North. It is the Northern Muslim elite that impoverished the Northern Muslim youth. The Northern Muslim elite pocketed the largesse that came to the North. Only they and their families benefitted. They turned the attention of Boko Haram to the innocent Christians in the North”.
Owojaiye further lamented: “It is more annoying that instead of the elite realizing 50 per cent of their wealth to solve the poverty problem of the Muslim North, they are crying and putting pressure and intimidating the Federal Government to set up a Boko Haram Commission.”
Stressing that it was wickedness on the part of the Arewa leaders not to consider the plight of the families of those killed during the insurgency that ravaged the North, the NORSCEF chairman stated: “Since the post-election violence, thousands of Christians have been killed or maimed, thousands of Christian businesses have been ruined, and hundreds of churches destroyed or closed down…and nobody is talking of compensating the innocent people who have been affected.
“Contemplating granting amnesty to the people who have wrought wanton destruction of lives and property in this nation is a call to other interest groups to rise up in arms against their fatherland, in order to be blessed when such an action should be treated as treason.
“Intimidating the Federal Government to grant amnesty is the highest display of hypocrisy and lack of patriotism . Are such people not indirectly admitting that they are the shadows or ghosts behind Boko Haram? We totally object to even discussing amnesty when nothing has been done for the victims of Boko Haram.”
“Let all who collude or sponsor Boko Haram or refuse to come to the help of Christians for political or economic reasons know that heaven is watching and nobody will go free. The blood of the Christian martyrs is crying to heaven for justice”, Owojaiye added.
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