Book Haram And Amnesty
Much has been said or written about amnesty for Boko Haram Islamist sect which has been wedging bloody campaign against the nation state and its people for no just cause. The sect which is synonymous with anarchy and savaging has over the years, brought death, anguish and nightmare to many homes across the country.
Given its penchant for violence, nothing could be more absurd than forcing an undeserved pardon for a band of iconoclasts, which is anti God and humanity. The amnesty will also be tantamount to rewarding meritoriously the worst forms of evil and recalcitrancy.
That Abuja bomb attack on Nigeria’s Independence Day anniversary played to the fore the nation’s dark history which the people and the leadership resolved to put behind them being as it was, a mischievous distraction to nation building. It will be recalled that an Islamic scholar of blessed memory, Sheikh Abubakar Gumi was once alleged to have told the defunct Quality Magazine that “no Southerner should be allowed to rule Nigeria as the moment this happens, Nigeria is finished”.
Could it be that the notorious sect is of the same mind set with the late Islamic scholar who charted the future of this nation with clouded vision and therefore executing his unpatriotic personal agenda? Aside from its bulky criminal luggage, the bloody sect has no ideological grievances other than the mooted or implied Islamization of Nigeria. Could it also be that Boko Haram has gradually become a modern Frankenstein monster which occasionally bares its fangs against its creator? Implied is the sporadic assassinations of those who belong to the same fold under its mindless killing spree.
Boko Haram’s link with foreign terrorists groups lends the gangsters an international image with multiple agenda to execute in Nigeria. It may be that one of the objectives of the massacre of innocent people is to depopulate parts of Northern Nigeria and nurture a favourable environment programmed to undermine the credibility of the 2015 national poll.
Niger Delta militants enjoyed amnesty because the goose that lays the golden egg has had its habitat devastated by crude oil exploration without compensatory infrastructural developments on the ground. It was an economic war against an insensitive federal government while the campaign was neither ethnicised nor regionalized.
In Nigeria’s long and tedious march of regression, the leadership should reflect on the satirical lines credited to Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens who was worried in his time that “It is in vain you build the city except you build the man” whereas in Nigeria, neither the city nor the man is being built.
In our peculiar circumstances, it is proper to recall that after 74 years of existence as a single nation, Czechoslovakia peacefully disintegrated into Czech and Slovak Republics without a single shot fired.
Nigeria should nurture the courage and operate a federal system where there are no senior or junior partners. This way, the federation will survive today and future challenges on nation building.
Works Ministry: Rescue Our Road
Sir, Please, Hon Commissioner for Works, dispatch your road engineers to some communities like Irete about 6 kilometres from Owerri along the Owerri/Onitsha Expressway to see and feel what the people pass through on daily basis.
One of the worst areas is the feeder road to the Express Road by ICC Block Industry. Daily, the tender, the ageing and the aged tumble into the pool of dirty water from the narrow sand bags that meander beside the deep stagnant ponds. It’s an S.O.S plea.
John Okay
Irete.
Treason Charge Against
Uwazuruike and Co. Is Hokum
Sir, it is horrendous how the Federal Government okays amnesty for a terrorist group as Boko Hararn, even by going on its knees to beg the violent group, but here is the Supreme Court okaying Chief Ralph Uwazuruike and Co. of the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). which operates on a non-violence agitation, for treason trial.
No wonder Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu vehemently said in his recent lecture to the British House of Commons that Ndigbo are marginalized in Nigeria. It is appalling that Southeast politicians might have sold out, and this is the result. If not, all the regions now have armed wing which they are using for negotiation:(South West-OPC, South south – MEND, North – Boko Haram). But here is non-violent MASSOB members charged for treason.
Odikwa egwu o!
Odimegwu Onwumere,
