BY TAYE OBATERU

Jos – Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, CRCN, has advised the Federal Government to constitute a presidential contact committee to meet with members of the Boko Haram sect as a way out of the current insurgency.

The group in a statement on Sunday by its President, Mallam Shehu Sani, said the committee should be headed by “a respected and politically neutral elder statesman.”

It identified 21 issues which it claimed gave rise to the Boko Haram problem to include the extra-judicial killing of leader of the sect, Muhammad Yusuf and the repressive acts against the members in 2009.

Others  reasons it said included “the inspiration from the success of the armed struggle in the Niger Delta, government’s policy on appeasing militancy, abject poverty and high rate of unemployment in the Northern states as well as disconnect between elected and appointed leaders and the people.”

The group also identified “exclusion of members of the Boko Haram sect by mainstream Islamic groups, proliferation of arms in the north east, Chadian civil war and illegal immigration, absence of data and intelligence about individuals and organizational links with foreign groups, lack of true federalism, resistance of the political establishment to a national conference, the collapse of public schools and Federal Government’s increasing reliance on foreign security agencies.”

CRCN suggested “the creation of a Ministry for Peace, Ethnic and Religious Harmony, compensation and formal apology to the family of the slain Boko Haram leader, release of the members of the groups in detention and the setting up of a special joint federal and state fund for the rehabilitation and assistance to the Almajiri children as ways forward.”

The statement added “massive economic aid and investment in particularly the north-eastern states, mainstreaming all religious sects and groups in broader religious bodies.”