Many, including yours sincerely have written or commented on the question of amnesty as being proffered and demanded by Boko Haram apologists.
Fortunately and unfortunately, the presidency is under pressure over the issue and having said earlier that there would be no amnesty to which many group such as Afenifere and CAN subscribed, very powerful and I quickly add, not negligible voices have added to the demand which will likely change the position of Mr President.
I did predict that the presidency would succumb and the way things are shaping up, the dice is about to cast. Amnesty for Boko Haram has therefore become topical. The latest version is that a committee has either been set up or about being set up to advice Mr President in addition to other consultations to be made. Perhaps Afenifere and CAN might be pleaded with or persuaded to reconsider their stand, under the guise of the interest of the peace of the nation.
The only area which presents a knotty problem is the issue of who is and what does Boko Haram stand for.
These two very vital questions will come to the fore on the negotiation table. They can neither be downplayed nor shoved aside because negotiation(s) go(es) on between person and person, between person and persons or between persons and persons. Above all it is interests that are put on the table. Our leaders and our enemies all know this. Infact there must be sides and there must be issues before agreement. It is only when these are available that meaningful negotiation could go on.
So, as the President Jonathan’s Committee brain storm, they must know that what has been entrusted onto them is a life snake. That must be handled with care and Nigerians are all watching.
Somebody said “I know Nigeria, they will soon sit in Camera” As for me I don’t care whether they sit in Camera or in cinema. All we want is peace not the fragile one.
The peace however must be comprehensive otherwise it will be fragile and this is no peace. Agreements must also be peaceable, that is, capable of guaranteeing peace for the future, for the generation yet unborn so that people of today so badly wronged and brutalized can look up to something. Something that will make them swallow their saliva and wipe away their ever flowing tears. The tears of the memory of our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children and even compatriots brutally wasted without cause. Wasted while in the church worshipping, wasted while in the market buying or selling, wasted for being in the barracks which is the official abode of men and women in the police and armed forces. Above all wasted for boarding a bus hoping to get to your destination but was rather decimated with one wicked detonation.
It is even good and wise of Mr President to insist that amnesty be negotiated for, had he hurriedly in the wake of the demand, acceded; this country would have had no future.
So let the negotiations begin It must be sounded loud and clear that the victims of the Niger Delta Militancy were either men of the police and armed forces or oil workers not church worshippers or traders. In all these three classes the three beneficiaries of the amnesty are not just only those involved in the physical fracas but innocent people who lost their lives just for going out there to look for food for self and for dependant relations.
They were all as a matter of fact well compensated and settled to sooth their sorrows. This is why as a matter of urgency the federal government must inaugurate another committee which will start a very quick but necessary compilation of all that were maimed and rendered useless or out rightly killed by the Boko Haram bombs, explosives and bullets.
They must all be identified and classified. There are some whose total means of livelihood ended in a market inferno caused by Boko Haram. Today he lives a wretch completely dependant on only God knows what. There are children in their infants who were suddenly orphaned because their parents who took them to church did not come back to the house till date but were rather taken to the mortuary just because Boko Haram attacked them while worshiping in their churches. There are some hitherto able bodies but had to be amputated courtesy of Boko Haram. There is yet a class that died twice because Boko Haram killed their kinsmen and they went to retrieve the bodies only to concede more men. They are just so many and cannot all be fully enumerated here. All I have tried to do is to point the attention of the negotiators towards latent but more meaningful and serious ingredients of the amnesty so that the negotiators will know that amnesty has many faces. To shy away from these is to keep the country on a pedestal of continued cold blooded murder and demands for amnesty. People must be fully compensated for amnesty to be appreciated by all.
