THIS BOKO HARAM AMNESTY

At the time I conceived of writing this piece, the rumour was ripe that Boko Haram amnesty package was done and dusted, only waiting to be unwrapped in a formal ceremony. But suddenly it was out that Boko Haram did not want any of our amnesty. So, as I write now, I am perplexed as to what will happen next. I’m not sure what to believe; whether there will eventually be amnesty or not. But I write all the same.

While the cooks of amnesty delicacy were still busy preparing their pot-pourri of a deal, there was a low rumbling across the country. From north to south, there were just too many people, fellow citizens, who had qualms with Boko Haram being granted amnesty in Nigeria. They are not just southerners, they cut across Nigeria; Muslims and Christians and even people of other faiths.

Their reasons are many and varied. A good number of them believe that Boko Haram are already down on their knees. Their actions are now defined by desperation than actually being in control of the war. If Nigeria grants them amnesty, it will take shine off the Joint Task Force and the SSS who have made a lot of sacrifice and took the war to the Boko Haram.

Some others say the logic and argument that Boko Haram and Niger Delta militants’ causes are the same is not tenable. So offering them the same package is both untenable and unacceptable. For instance, the Niger Delta militants kidnapped for ransom and were involved just in Crude Oil sabotage, but Boko Haram were busy mass-killing and maiming people.

Yet some other opinions have it that the Niger Deltans have an economic cause, which once met ended the hostilities. Now, with Boko Haram it is not an economic issue, so what manner of settlement will suffice, to appease religious bigots? And if they accepted the amnesty where will funding come from? Are we going to fall back still to the meager and over stretched national purse? Quite a strong argument!

Meanwhile, let me state here what I had written elsewhere on facebook. I am fully in support of the amnesty package for Boko Haram. Though I know that my support or otherwise will have little or no bearing on the outcome of the events. But this sentiment is predicted on the fact that Boko Haram has killed and maimed many Nigerians over these years of hostilities with the Nigerian state. Sad enough, majority of the people who have lost their lives in these senseless acts have been common Nigerians, ordinary citizens, who are just living their lives, who have no sympathy either with the quest of Boko Haram or the views of the government.

I was a witness of the Police Headquarters bombing, UN House bombing, Thisday House bombing. I remember how many times churches were bombed in Abuja, Kaduna, Jos, Gombe, Yola, Mubi, not to mention Maiduguri and Damaturu and their adjacent towns and villages that have become theatre of death.

Are we going to continue like this as a nation, where you wake up in the morning and you do not know if you would be blown to smithereens before noon, or one trigger-happy extremist will find you a befitting prize for his ‘God’ on the day?

One hoped the amnesty deal would sell, and let us have peace. But now it seems peace, like the sailing smoke, will remain elusive to us once again.

Sadly enough no one is free of Boko Haram wahala, because their victims have not been Christians only. All Nigerians and foreigners alike had in the past fallen victims of their kidnapping, shooting and bombing menace, leaving behind tremor, sorrow and gnashing of teeth.

So if you ask me, the best thing to do is to find a way to tame the cobra, even if it means swallowing some of our ego and ceding some of our sense of Right. This is where wisdom comes in. As long as it ensures that the next person does not fall the victim. The first time I wrote this was before President Jonathan went to Maiduguri and called Boko Haram ‘ghosts’. And here we are again.

Now let me surprise you with the besetting thought I have carried for some days about this amnesty thing. Despite what I expressed above, I was deeply afraid of the precedence we are setting in our quest for this ‘false’ peace. When the elders of the north began their blackmail for Jonathan to prepare the amnesty package, they all held that Niger Delta militants were given one, why not Boko Haram. They believed the colours of naira would achieve the same magic it did in the creeks.

And because we want the peace, not many deem it necessary to ask what happens when you forgive a man who shows no contrition for evil done to others, who gives no damn about the writs of our constitution, and on top of it pay him off with state resources to live fat?

First, you free his conscience from guilt. He stops considering the blood he had shed, rather thinks his cause is justified. You grant him a bragging right on the streets and an opportunity to go back to the trenches to commit even more heinous atrocities if and when he is no longer satisfied with our deal. So, he and whatever he spawns will continue to blackmail and prey on the state, they will never stop asking for more, because, after all, we are the ones begging them. That is exactly what is happening now in the Niger Delta where some youths have felt justified to go back to the creeks. And knowing this, distresses the heart.

Not only that. We are also setting precedence where crime seems to pay in the country. By the time Boko Haram amnesty is fully delivered, we would have set in motion arms race by youth groups who feel that armed struggles are what pay now in Nigeria and who see shedding of blood as veritable way of getting recognized in Nigeria. How many of them would emerge after Boko Haram, one cannot tell.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time in Nigeria blood of brothers suddenly worth less than that of goats and fowls, when the sight of a murdered brother filled with a sense of satisfaction and triumph. We had the Tiv riot and Operation wetie in the Southwest, in the 60s. Murder, arson, looting became a justified act and men killed their brothers without guilt. Just to settle political scores. And sooner, the nation imploded. The military took over. And the rest is now story. And because the story of Nigeria in the 60s became overshadowed by the Nigeria/Biafra civil war, not many people, even historians look back to the primary and remote causes of the war or what we could learn from it. The war and the aftermath, took shine off the crises that built up to that climax.

Here we are again. Today we have elders and political leaders who blackmail each other with lies in the face insurgency that thrives on many neglects of past and present. What can these northern elders tell President Jonathan of the poverty in their domain? After ruling Nigeria for so many years, the human population in the north is over 70% illiterates. And poverty has a northern face in the country.

Because if most of the followers of Imam Shekau were educated, they would not be led like goats, nor buy hook, line and sinker all that was told them by the agents of death. Also if they went to school, held down a good job, they would unlikely be a tool in the hand of people like Shekau.

Rather, many politicians of the north pillaged the nation, settled themselves and their progenies without minding for the common people. Go through Kano, Sokoto, Yobe and all the places and see hordes of almajiri on the streets; body gaunt, eyes vacant and looking into the future with fright. Nigerian government past and present—ruled by northerners and southerners alike—failed to plan for these ones. And they will continue to be a fertile recruitment ground for Boko Haram and the likes.

As at the time of writing this, over 70% of Nigerian resources is still being plundered by politicians and their bureaucrat and contractor friends. Our budgeting system is anti-welfare; or how can one justify a budget of 4.3 trillion naira, which if shared by Nigerian population everyone will walk home with close to two million naira, be spent in a budget year and still 70 percent of the population live below poverty line. And this is just the federal budget; there are states’, there are local governments’. Is this not an irony?

So Nigerians still have to pay for everything; housing, school for their children, hospital bills, electricity, in fact everything, including ordinary water they drink. Poverty walks on foot and treks side by side the opulence of the haves, whose connection with the men at the top is their only mantra. And then frustration builds up and spreads like mad cow disease across the nation. And this frustration is vented in many ways; men killing men, men kidnapping men for ransom, men raping women they could not afford to date, and all manner of evil like, spreading across the nation. And funny enough those who become most brazen are the ones who deserve our amnesty.

I am not a prophet, but I see it coming again, when a few isolated, wayward thinkers in the military will feel that enough is enough. When such elements arose in the 1960’s the common people welcomed them, because the people had become exhausted of the politicians and their hypocrisy. Are we not nearing the same end road with our current situation? Tell: how different is Nigeria of 1964 and 1965 to today? Is it the obvious and arrant corruption? Or the disillusionment of the masses? Or the wanton mass killings and maiming? What was there then is not here now?

So, here, we have a choice to make. Both northern and southern leaders alike, before this nation will implode again. The Igbo has precedence of history and may not allow themselves on a cleft stick this time around. So in this next implosion I see, it may be to your-tents-oh-Israel.

But we can rescue ourselves. Not with frivolous amnesty. Let government be responsible to the people, let the welfare of the people be paramount to our leaders. Let us shear out the resources padded into self-serving budgets of ministries and agencies and plough them into welfare services to the people. Let there be trust between the government and the governed. In an economic boom Boko Haram will not find hands to recruit, when all of us have gone to work. So, let us make Nigeria work. And let the people rise and account for their neighbors.

Let the Nigerian leaders be leaders indeed. Let them hasten to banish this escalating poverty and phase out disillusionment. Let us do away with a nation where one man builds a cathedral for God among millions of others who have no daily bread. If not, the next implosion will happen, and in comparism Boko Haram will only be a trite.

Written By Izuchukwu Okeke