Sultan and amnesty – the real issues

Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto and leader of the Muslim faith in Nigeria, asked President Jonathan ‘to see how he can declare total amnesty for all combatants without thinking twice’. By combatants is meant Boko-Haram. In a similar tone, Ahmed Lawan, senator representing Yobe North, called on the President to institute a Marshal Plan brand of recovery for the affected states just like the United States did for Europe, especially Germany, in post-World War II reconstruction effort. For Lawan, the war is over, it’s now about reconstruction and rehabilitation. Is that true?

This is an example of the self-delusion that has characterised most northern politicians’ attitude to Boko insurgency. The war is raging, they pretend it isn’t and behave like it isn’t. If they had been true to it, the unease it carries would have compelled them to seek and find solution. In their failure, they look for scapegoats if only that would guarantee re-entry to the comfort zone. But it’s erasing pain that brings comfort.

Coming to the Sultan, what many don’t understand is the silent fear of the northern elite. They have come to realise they’re not safe. This column analysed the situation a long time ago and foretold it. Not being safe means nobody can save them, not even the Federal Government. So their public utterances are usually sensitively calibrated in the pattern: Federal Government, I am with you; Boko-Haram, I am with you. The parties can now go and sort themselves out. If the Sultan were sure that nothing would happen, he would speak differently. He knows that calling for amnesty for Boko is flagrantly ridiculous but as a voice, he still did.

You give amnesty to Boko, Ansaru breaks off and becomes more virulent; you give amnesty to An

saru, Subaru breaks off and perfects desolation. You can see that what the north has allowed to plague it is cancerous. Cells keep breaking off, spreading and destroying more body parts. Chemotherapy is what’s used

to burn off the affected cells, so if the Federal Government uses fire, it’s just to burn off cancerous cells.Even the President can’t be trusted in his reply, ‘We cannot talk about amnesty for Boko Haram now until you see the people you are dealing with.’ In effect, he will grant Boko amnesty when they show up and when he knows who he is dealing with. That’s at variance with what Nigerians are saying. Nigerians say, this is a terrorist group, brutal and mindless, and therefore must be separated from society and dealt with. If they’re not dealt with, the next generation of insurgency will be deadly enough to chase government from power and scatter everything and everybody. These positions are not the same. The President therefore must know what he’s saying and what he’s thinking.

It’s not about amnesty, it’s about removing the filth in the head of the zealots. And it’s best through people’s action. It’s the people of the area that have to say, this thing is not good, we don’t want it. If they don’t want it, they silently mobilise their people against it, enlighten/educate them and support them to stand their ground. When the people reject the perpetrators, they reduce their space of mischief. That has not been the case with the north. There has been a penchant to call the destroyers ‘our own’, but when the destruction comes, Marshal Plan and amnesty become call cards. If southern Nigeria had seen traces of convincing rejection of

Boko, they’d have helped to narrow the space further and there’d be no Ansaru offshoot today. What we’ve rather seen is a misplaced audacity of an evil gang that boasts to bomb Lagos, Enugu and Port-Harcourt. The silence/ambivalence of the northern elite when outspokenness mattered most led to it.

When Danjuma spoke of civil war in the north, he was right; when Aliyu said that there may be no northern Nigeria again if events continue the way they are, he was right. But as leaders, they should have seen this three years ago; besides, they were variously alerted. Rather than see the issue, they busied themselves with fruitless poverty arguments. Now, how do you reconcile poverty with the report that 83 percent of Nigeria’s oil wells are owned by northerners? Nigeria is oil-dependent. If majority of it is owned by a section, who then is the poor – the northern owner or the southern spectator?

The Boko insurgency is not poverty-driven. It’s more a disease of the mind. Somebody waking up to say he’d Islamise Nigeria is a disease. Somebody acquiring exceeding wealth and not lifting his people and place is a disease. Somebody throwing bombs at worshippers is a disease. Somebody seeing evil and posturing it away is a disease. The herb is in the north, let them bring it.

ONYEBUCHI ONYEGBULE