The recent call on the President, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, by none other than His Eminence, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, the Sultan of Sokoto, to grant amnesty to all the members of the Boko Haram, deserves a second look.

I often think of Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe when thinking of leadership and how a leader’s action or inaction can make or mar a country. Mugabe and Mandela had a similar background; they were pillars in the struggle to liberate their people and suffered untold hardships in the process.

It’s amusing how we scurry about our ‘daily grind’ planning this, scheming that, plotting the other… all legitimate of course, all seemingly ‘worthwhile’, like somebody promised you tomorrow. No one said tomorrow wouldn’t come either so hey! I guess we just carry on… .

LAST week, the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar III, condemned the government’s crackdown on Boko Haram and said that President Goodluck Jonathan should grant “total amnesty” to the group’s members.

The statement that Nigeria is a poor country with widespread poverty is axiomatic. It is estimated that more than 75% in the Nigerian population live in squalor and could hardly make a decent living from what they do. This situation calls into question the general assumption that a country blessed with crude oil and other mineral resources and also endowed with natural human talents would have anything to do with deepening poverty and its attendant sufferings and deprivations.