By Jide Ajani & Ben Agande, Abuja

After prolonged prevarication on the issue of granting amnesty to members of the Jama’atul Ahlus Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, popularly known as Boko Haram, the move by the Presidency, last week, setting up a committee to explore the possibility of redeeming the security situation in the northern part of the country is being received with mixed feelings.  This report presents how members of the Northern Elders Forum, NEF, extracted the goodwill from President Goodluck Jonathan.

He was always being hemmed-in by the hawks and the doves inside Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Abuja.  And that is why it has taken this long.  For Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian state, he had grown a bit leaner, with the population of white hair on his head growing by the day.

Sunday Vanguard was told by Aso Rock insiders that there were occasions when Jonathan would look pensive, in the last one month, especially since his visit to Borno and Yobe States.  Whereas some of his advisers favoured the exploration of the possibility of making amnesty one of the approaches to putting an end to the Boko Haram menace, there were those who loathed the idea.  For the military that had lost officers and men, amnesty was being seen as a reward for brigandage.  Therefore, making up his mind was not always going to be easy.

“The most pressing thing on his mind was always how to tackle the mindless insurgency in the North being perpetrated by members of the Jama’atul Ahlus Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, popularly known as the Boko Haram.  There were moments the president would be close to tears especially as news of one mindless attack after another was breaking”, a source said.

Therefore, when moves were being explored for an audience with a bipartisan committee of northern leaders under the aegis of Northern Elders Forum, NEF, the doves in Aso Rock, sensing the mood in the North, jumped at it.

At that meeting, which ended in the very early hours of last Thursday, the president was said to have repeated his concerns about a guarantee from the NEF members.

Jonathan wanted them to put on the table guarantees that the proposition and extension of amnesty would not only satisfy the desires of the leaders but put a stop to the wanton destruction of lives and property.

The NEF members, on their part, made him  understand that they were also reaching out and making wider consultations with a view to ensuring that their part of the country becomes safe and good for business.

Selecting members of the team that would visit Jonathan in Abuja was done carefully and painstakingly.  Sunday Vanguard learnt that some very feisty members of the group known to have expressed open indifference to the security situation in the country were not invited.  Also, those known to have been openly antagonistic of the Jonathan administration were also not brought along.

Indeed, the NEF had come to Aso Rock with just one item on its agenda: AMNESTY.

Unlike the town hall meeting in Maiduguri where tempers flared, the meeting between Jonathan and the NEF was sober in tone and clear-headed in focus, an NEF member said.

Professor Ango Abdullahi, who led a twenty five-man delegation of the NEF to Aso Rock, told reporters at the end of the meeting which lasted over three hours, that  the parley “discussed amnesty and we said that government should factor in amnesty into whatever it is doing.”

The former vice chancellor of the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, who was in an upbeat mood,added: “The contention here is that the country is facing challenges and I’m sure that you will agree that there are challenges in the country particularly in the area of security.

That is the greatest challenge the country is facing today and we did spend a lot of time discussing the various issues on security matters”. He explained that from their discussion with Jonathan, “the president is already thinking very hard on it and I think he assured us that there is a special meeting on the matter tomorrow.”

To underscore the seriousness of their mission to the seat of power, the NEF delegation cut across the religious divide as it was made up of  Muslims and Christians from Plateau and Kaduna states where Christians have been the targets of the Boko Haram onslaught.

The convergence of opinion by these hitherto uncooperative groups on the  issue of amnesty for Boko Haram, according to one of the members of the delegation, “underscores the biting effect of the activities of the sect on not just Christians but also Muslims in the region and it came at a time we all agreed that trying to crush the insurgency through military means will only compound the already bad state of affairs in most of the northern states of the federation”.

So when the National Security Council, NSC, met to deliberate on the state of the nation, on Thursday afternoon, it was obvious that the issue of amnesty for members of the sect would take the centre stage.

The activities of Boko Haram over stretching the country’s security apparatus to such an extent that it was becoming increasingly difficult for the armed forces to meet their  international obligations in terms of peace keeping and the president was losing grounds amongst the vast majority of the people of the North who believe, rightly or wrongly, that he was hesitant in extending the same treatment that was given to the Niger Delta militants because members of the Boko Haram are not Christians like him.

For a country where religious issues are sensitive, allowing such sentiment to fester would not only spell doom for the political ambitions of the president but would also threaten the very existence of the country as one indivisible entity. It was one risk that neither  Jonathan nor the minders of  national security could contemplate.

At the end of the NSC meeting, government announced the setting up of a committee that would work with the office of the National Security Adviser to explore the feasibility or otherwise of  the granting of amnesty to members of Boko Haram.

The committee, which membership is known only to the leadership of government, has, as its terms of reference: considering  the feasibility or otherwise of granting pardon to the Boko Haram adherents; collating clamours arising from different interest groups who want the apex government to administer clemency on members of the religious sect; and recommending  modalities for the granting of the pardon, should such step become the logical one to take under the prevailing circumstance. The committee has two weeks to submit its report.

Speaking after the NSC meeting, Reuben Abati, presidential spokes person, told Sunday Vanguard in a telephone chat that “every other thing would flow from the report of the committee that has been set up”.  Indeed, there had been calls from the North for amnesty to the Boko Haram members similar to the one granted the Niger Delta militants by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2009.

Like the Niger Delta militants, the Boko Haram sect has carried out a  war of attrition against the  nation  especially the security forces, a situation that led to the deaths of more than two thousand people. But unlike the Niger Delta militants, whose activities were aimed at disrupting oil production by targeting oil infrastructure, Boko Haram aligned with internationally known terrorist organisations in what has become known as the global jihad for the Islamisation of the country.

In carrying out their dastardly act of violence, members of the sect targeted security formations, international organisations and  churches in the North not only to  destabilise the government but also to precipitate a religious conflagration that would win them  support through the emotive deployment of religious sentiments.

Expectedly, the reaction of government has been firm and, as some people have argued, brutal. The security forces have resorted to  maximum force to neutralize the group. Consequently, there has been lull in economic activities in the North, especially in Borno, Yobe and Kano states which have been identified as the epicentres of the insurgency.

With no prospect of a clear victory from either of the parties in the conflagration, and the increasing devastating consequences of the crisis on the economy and lives, concerned Nigerians mulled the idea of amnesty for the group in order to check the steady slide to  anarchy and to avert continued loss of lives.

For proponents of the amnesty programme for  Boko Haram, the move would provide government an opportunity to separate those who are ‘genuinely’ convinced about the principles of their grievances and those who are hiding behind the broader umbrella of misgivings to perpetuate crime.

What began as an isolated call for amnesty for the Islamist group    began to gain momentum as the bloody activities of Boko Haram  engaged a mindless trajectory in ferocity and brutality.  With the call coming from men of integrity on both sides of the religious divides, government was brought under tremendous pressure to look at the call more seriously, especially considering the fact that with the country being almost effectively divided into two and the economy of almost a half of the country becoming comatose as a result of the activities of the sect.

Perhaps, the crescendo of the call came when the Sultan of Sokoto and leader of Muslims in Nigeria, Alhaji Saad Abubakar aligned with it. Speaking in Kaduna at the opening of the annual central council meeting of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI), which was attended by senior traditional rulers and Muslim leaders from across the country, the Sultan, who had consistently condemned the activities of the Boko Haram sect as unislamic and had himself borne the boot of criticism from the sect, urged Jonathan, who was scheduled to visit the hotbed of the sect in Borno and Yobe states, to use the few members of the sect who denounced terrorism to reach out to others who had yet to do that.

He stated: “I want to use this opportunity to advise the president, as we heard he is planning to visit Borno State on Thursday, to see how he can declare total amnesty to all combatants without thinking twice. This will make any other person who picks up arms to be termed as a criminal. If the amnesty is declared, it will make all those who have been tired of running and hiding to come out and embrace the amnesty”.

The Sultan went on: “Some of them have already come out. In fact, we heard stories in the papers that some have come out. Even if it is one person that denounces terrorism, it is the duty of the government to accept that person because he can be used to reach others. Whether it is true or not, the government should accept that person first and then interrogate him to see if he really belongs to the sect or not. Some people think we are not doing anything as leaders in the North.

No, we have done enough and I want to commend all of you in what you have been doing. We will continue to do so despite criticisms because we know what we are doing. In sha Allah we will continue to talk with the government to be just in whatever they do.

We want to tell our political leaders and religious leaders the truth on the way forward for this country. We will continue to advise the government at all levels. If they do what they ought to do, Alhamdulillah (Thanks be to God). If they don’t do we will continue to tell them to do the right thing because it is our duty to tell them.”.

Coming from a man of high political and religious standing as the head of the Nigerian Muslims, the call for Boko Haram amnesty was bound to resonate across the country, and certainly it did. While some people saw the call as worthy of consideration by government in view of the enormous political and religious clout Alhaji Sa’ad commands,  others, who had been cynical of the role of northern political and religious leaders since the Boko Haram insurgency broke out, saw the call as the vindication of their belief that the region’s political elite is behind the insurgency because of the assumption that the whole essence of the revolt by the Boko Haram was a manifestation of the frustrations by political leaders because of their  loss of political power.

But to view the call by the Sultan as the case of a Muslim leader trying to protect the cause of adherents of his faith is to be narrow minded in the perception of the complexities of the Boko Haram imbroglio. Although the Catholic Church has borne much of the carnage perpetrated by the sect, one of the first proponents of a dialogue between government and the Islamist group is no less a person than the Catholic Arch bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah.

Because of his unique position as a priest in the North, Kukah, perhaps, more than most other Christian commentators, understood better  the futility of trying to vanquish Boko Haram  militarily. In one of his several calls for  the granting of amnesty to the sect, he  noted: “To reject amnesty is to place oneself at the same level as these miscreants. Their destruction of our nation is not near the devastation of apartheid in South Africa. Yet, under President Mandela, Archbishop Tutu had to offer amnesty to leap frog the reconciliation process. To paraphrase the Yoruba adage, the hand that gives amnesty is on top of the hand that receives”.

Giving further clarification of his notion of amnesty, the Catholic cleric said,“An offer of amnesty is not the same as a declaration of amnesty. An offer of amnesty brings the penitent to the table as a first step. Amnesty is a process not a destination. The offer of amnesty will not solve all our problems, but it will bring us closer to a new dawn.

No matter the crimes committed by members of Boko Haram, those of them who are Nigerians have not lost their membership of our community.” For two leaders of the two dominant religious groups in the country – the Sultan and Kukah – to be on the same page on the issue of amnesty, it was obvious that it would not be long before the hardliners in the Jonathan administration, who have persistently viewed the issue of the Boko Haram insurgency from the narrow prism of politics, would have a rethink of their position before government loses its goodwill with, not only the northern political leaders who have borne the brunt of the savagery of Boko Haram, but  also all other Nigerians whose lives and livelihood have become increasingly shaped by the activities of the sect.

Despite the seeming foot-dragging by the Federal Government on the issue of amnesty for Boko Haram,  those who believe in the inviolability of amnesty remained relentless in their push. An opportunity presented itself when the president visited the epicentre of the insurgency in Borno and Yobe states and had a meeting with the political leaders of the two states.

While receiving the president, the governor of Borno State, Alhaji Shettima, captured the mindset of the people of the areas most devastated by the activities when he told Jonathan that the offer of amnesty that brought about peace in the Niger Delta region should be extended to the Islamist group.

“Mr. President sir, I deliberately delayed the most important issue that should occupy the minds of all of us here, that is the much discussed issue of peace negotiations especially with the recent offer of ceasefire made by some members in the leadership of the Jama’atu Ahlil Sunnah Lidda’awati wal Jihad, Boko Haram in common parlance,”Shettima said.

“As a people and government of the state most affected by this insurgency, we most passionately welcome this development because the peace process must start from one step. Getting just a person can lead to getting hundreds and more. Our focus must be on the way forward and not to be stiff or go down to distraction.  It is our duty to unearth the ghosts that we seek to negotiate with.”

He also said the Federal Government should immediately engage all stakeholders and initiate the process of articulating a comprehensive blueprint for addressing the scourge of poverty and deprivation in Nigeria.

“I specifically enjoin the Federal Government to come up with  a marshal plan for the North East geo political zone in the same way it did for the Niger Delta to tackle the twin menace of poverty and insecurity. Integral part of that marshal plan should be the recharging of the dwindling Lake Chad, the water resources which has the potential of positively transforming the lives of more than 30 million people spread on the shores of the region’’.

The governor’s position could not have come at a better. While expressing his frustration with negotiating peace with members of the Boko Haram sect, Jonathan told indigenes of Borno during a town hall meeting that because of the refusal of members of the sect to unveil themselves to allow for negotiation between them and government, he could not declare amnesty for ghosts.

The statement drew flaks from government critics but poignantly captured government’s frustration with its inability to identify the leadership of the Islamist group for proper negotiation.

The escalation of violence in the North by the sect, shortly after the president visited Borno and Yobe states, brought greater fervor to the desirability of exploring the option of amnesty.

For those clamouring for amnesty, the government  decision may just be one step in the quest to return normalcy to the North. But to majority of innocent people in the region who have borne the brunt of the massacre and destruction,this is one leap in their desire to live normal lives again. It is one step that Nigerians are going to watch closely and with great interest.