Implications of amnesty for Boko Haram

Members of the boko haram sect
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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, a group of radical Islamist terrorists that have been responsible for the general insecurity in the country. The group has been implicated in the bombings of public buildings and mass murders of thousands of innocent Nigerians. Although the committee has been limited to merely exploring the possibility and the nature of the pardon, the President’s action is already being considered a capitulation to terror.

The sudden volte-face should not come as a surprise. Holding talks with Boko Haram had always been President Jonathan’s preferred option of resolving the current security logjam. The torrents of pressure from some powerful groups only gave it a final push. But if eventually Jonathan buckles under this pressure and 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.

It is argued that as perverse as it sounds, violent Islamists around the world are people who believe they are doing the right thing and believe that violence is how they will achieve what is best. It is black and white in their minds. 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.”

Boko Haram has proclaimed its hatred for democracy and requested the resignation of the elected President of the country. For anyone to think of sharing money to a group that has openly defined its “agenda” as working to establish a theocratic state is akin to administering a fatally wrong treatment to a well diagnosed ailment. 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?

In Saudi Arabia, instead of pretending by delinking terrorism from religion, the government decided to go after the men, money and mindset that support terrorism and extremism. This is reinforced by what the Saudi authorities describe as a “war of ideas,” which aims to instil the concepts of moderation and tolerance, and to undermine any justifications for extremism and terrorism on an intellectual level. As a result of its uncompromising stance on terrorism, now, there are no major terrorist operatives or cells openly operating in Saudi Arabia. A September 2011 report by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace declared, “There are not too many countries that have successfully dismantled and muzzled terrorism like Saudi Arabia has done.”

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 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and then attended a Saudi rehabilitation programme for former militants and extremists. But the so-called Saudi Eleven subsequently fled the country and rejoined terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Those seeking to be seen as conciliatory towards all faiths by backing the flawed idea of amnesty for terrorists will soon be proved wrong. But if there is any discussion that needs to be undertaken immediately, it should be one on how to restructure Nigeria’s skewed federalism so that diverse nationalities can live peacefully in mutual respect and accommodation of their different cultural, religious and world views. Nigerians must face the reality of their heterogeneous existence.

Like every known terror group, Boko Haram, if granted amnesty and given money, will only use that opportunity and the resources to regroup and re-launch itself out afresh. The Nigerian state must take a very clear position of zero tolerance for terrorism of any hue.