BOKO HARAM: NORTHERN LEADERS HAVE FAILED -NDNF BOSS

By NBF News

 Six-year single tenure
Our group is aware that there are mixed reactions to it but we want Nigerians to know that it is the best proposal that has come from the presidency. Our group thinks the president has started very well. To look at it the other way, maybe the word six is one of the parameters people are using.

It could have been a single term of eight years, which is left to the legislators that would handle it. People should not be bothered about the motive of President Jonathan; they should be bothered about the merits of the issue.

The Niger Delta nationalities in Lagos support it because previous elections have cost the nation huge sums of money and this has to be repeated every four years. Nigerians have lost trillions of naira as a result of conducting elections in the country. We think what the president is trying to do, is to reduce the amount of money Nigerians will be losing every four years. The economy is the one at the receiving end. What the president has done is the best thing that can happen to Nigeria. We also believe that Nigerians, who voted for him, should stand by him and support him on this proposal.

We have always identified four groups of persons who are against this proposal. The first group are those who lost out during previous elections and feel the proposal will not be good for them. The second group are those who feel that their contemporaries have spent two terms in office, thinking they would be shortchanged at the end of the day if the proposal scales through.

The third are those who have not contested elections before. Those who have not borrowed to run for elections do not understand what the single term means. For them, they believe that the proposal should not be. The fourth group, who are ferociously against it, are the enemies of the president. These are people who never liked him while aspiring to become president. They are mobilising their people to make sure that whatever comes from President Jonathan should not be acceptable.

Report that indicted Shell's operation in Ogoniland

Our group believes that it is a good development. We are happy that Shell will be made to compensate the people of Ogoniland for the long years of oil spillage, which has left the community devastated. The Federal Government should see to it that Shell complies with the report. And so, we did our best and that contribution gave out Lagos as one of the states that the president won; we are very happy about it. We are not out there to collect money from anybody, we never did that but the tribal groups organised themselves and we did a unique job.

Menace of Boko Haram
First of all, it is not our place to say Boko Haram should not be given amnesty but giving amnesty to Boko Haram has its own negative implication. A negative implication in the sense that you are asking other self-determination groups to demand for amnesty and that negative tendency should not be allowed. Giving Boko Haram amnesty is not the best, but the generally known method of carrot and stick is acceptable.

The military has been sent to the restive areas like they were sent to the Niger Delta; those who want to dialogue with government can be received by government because they are Nigerians, who are perpetrating this act. In the same vein, we cannot ask them to be killed but those who may not want to confront the military, the military can protect them like they did in the Niger Delta. By and large, what is happening in Borno State, is a developmental challenge and what this means is that the Federal Government must update itself in intelligence gathering.

We think sending the military to the place is a good thing but they (military) should be careful so as not to repeat what they did in the Niger Delta. But again, the other side of is that what goes around, comes around. When the JTF were in the Niger Delta in respect of our militants, the Northern leaders complained that somebody like EK Clark was an accomplice. I remember someone like Alhaji Yakassai saying that leadership in the Niger Delta has failed. Where are the leaders in the North? What are they saying? They should also take up this challenge by curbing the Boko Haram so that we will know that leadership in the North has not failed.