By Pius Mordi
At peak of the campaign in 2013 to package an amnesty programme for Boko Haram terrorists who were wreaking havoc in the northeast and enormous pressure was brought on then President Goodluck Jonathan, Hajia Turai Yar’Adua, widow of late President Umaru Yar’Adua, pleaded that a general amnesty be granted to the Boko Haram terror group. The former First Lady was apparently convinced that just as the amnesty granted Niger Delta militants led to the cessation of sabotage of oil facilities and stabilised crude oil export, creating a similar platform for the murderous islamist group will pacify them and restore peace to the northeast.
“I want my brother [President Jonathan] to sit and think carefully and grant amnesty to Boko Haram. I am expecting my brother to do what Umaru did for the militants in the Niger Delta. Some people sang here today that children are dying in the Niger Delta; let me tell you that children are dying every day in the North. As your sister and a Northerner, I want you to think carefully. There is so much suffering in the North just like it happened in the Niger Delta. Your sister says think carefully and do what Umaru did”, Hajia Turai pleaded.
But there was a snag as pointed out by Mallam Kabiru Tanimu, then Minister for Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs. “No matter how passionate the President wants to engage them, there are limitations. In Niger Delta, you could see the militants. When you need to engage them you know where to get them in the creeks, you can talk to them. But now we have a problem in the North and you can’t get Boko Haram, you don’t know how to talk to them,” Taminu stated.
The former First Lady’s intervention was a tempered one, much unlike that of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari who later succeeded Jonathan as President. Buhari classified the fight against the Boko Haram as a fight against the north. It was a narrative bought by the majority of northern leadership who religiously followed him. Such was their stance that the Northern Elders Forum led by Prof. Ango Abdullahi in January 2014 threatened to drag the then Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Azubuike Ihejirika, before the International Criminal Court (ICC) even after Jonathan had replaced him in a seeming gesture to scale down the fight against terrorism.
It is more than nine years since then President Buhari made good his vow to grant amnesty to Boko Haram fighters. However, rather than cease their murderous campaign as Nigerians were told, the scourge has gone beyond the northeast across the northern stretch to envelop the entire northwest.
Last December, the Punch published a report that more than N1.4 billion has been spent in the past 18 months for the rehabilitation of repentant terrorists and the establishment of centres for terrorism trials. There is a National Counter Terrorism Centre, the product of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act initiated and signed into law in May 2022 by Buhari. It was projected as a counterfoil to the Presidential Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta. Its Coordinator, Rear Admiral Yem Musa (rtd), told the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence that the government would spend N2.4 billion on the rehabilitation centres as part of the programme’s N3.8 billion capital projects for 2023.
A common denominator of the interventions of northern leaders on the Boko Haram scourge is the bid to replicate whatever was used to resolve the Niger Delta crisis for Boko Haram. From their version of PAP as envisioned in the NCTC, the Northeast Development Commission was created just as the Niger Delta Development Commission. Not much is heard of rehabilitation of displaced people, resettlement of communities forcibly driven from their farmlands or for them to repossess their lands.
The numerous temporary camps for internally displaced persons are looking more like their permanent abode as additional camps are even being set up in the northwest.
While stupendous resources are routinely budgeted for the upkeep, rehabilitation and reintegration of “repentant” terrorists, not much is heard of the victims of the carnage visited on the civil and farming population that are displaced and dispossessed. It is like they are mere appendages of a much larger agenda.
The trial of the terrorists that could not be classified as “repentant” is another opaque process. The trials are conducted out of public glare with mere figures dished out to the public intermittently. Politics, more than any other factor, seem to have driven the quest for amnesty for Boko Haram terrorists. The civil population that bore the brunt of the insurgency has become mere canon fodder. That their lands were being expropriated by the terrorists, their farmlands destroyed and their men and women routinely killed was an appendage of the crisis. The conduct was a reinforcement of the brazen claim of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, who declared that Fulanis anywhere are welcome to Nigeria and integrated. He stopped short of declaring Nigeria is a Fulani heritage.
When Buhari was exploring every possible option to disperse Fulanis and allocate land to them in every part of Nigeria, the scheme found an ally in the Bauchi governor who declared that Fulani herdsmen from Chad, Niger and other neighbouring countries would benefit from the National Livestock Transformation Plan being championed by the federal government to put herdsmen and their livestock in designated colonies and give them the opportunity of exploiting the livestock value chain.
Although the playing field is still dominated by Fulani militants and their backers, it will certainly not endure forever. The indigent people will not remain docile much longer. Sooner or later, a new generation will emerge that is not prepared to turn the other cheek as their forebears.
They will fight back to reclaim their ancestral homes and lands. This is precisely why the ongoing pampering of the terrorists is just the beginning. It boils over and the reaction will match the initial action.
Postscript
Like Mahama, like Trump
Tuesday’s colourful inauguration of John Mahama as President of Ghana was quite instructive. Before the United States regales in the imminent swearing of Donald Trump after losing his reelection bid during his first term, our West African neighbours have just done it.
Mahama came in as vice president to John Atta Mills who passed on before the end of his tenure, catapulting Mahama to the Presidential palace. His bid for reelection came unstuck, losing to now former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. The inauguration was made more remarkable by the emergence of the first female vice president of the country, Professor Jane Naane Opoku Agyemang, something Trump’s country is yet to manage.
President Tinubu had the distinction of addressing the inauguration, a demonstration of the special relationship between Nigeria and Ghana. It’s up to his countrymen to tread the path of Ghana and pave the way for women to emerge in the top echelon of elective political offices. It’s a new level of the jollof contest.
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