A claim by the Centre for Crisis Communication, a non-governmental organisation, that some Boko Haram leaders have approached it to facilitate a dialogue with the Federal Government, seems to whet President Muhammadu Buhari’s appetite for such an engagement. This is a slippery road the government had travelled before and was frustrated and hoodwinked by some third parties. The envisaged move, therefore, calls for sagacity.
we have remained relentless in discrediting terrorism as a legitimate means of expressing discontent. And, at every turn, we have exposed the fallacy of negotiating with a rabid jihadist terrorist group like Boko Haram. Rather than be caught off guard down, the Buhari government should consider the recent views of the Chadian President, Idriss Deby, on the group. “For my part, I would advise not to negotiate with a terrorist…Boko Haram is decapitated. There are little groups (of Boko Haram) scattered throughout North-East Nigeria, on the border with Cameroon. It is within our power to definitively overcome Boko Haram,” he said.
In an interview with the Cable News Network during his July visit to the United States, Buhari had also expressed a cautious approach to the negotiation bait: “I cannot be against it….So, if we are convinced that the leadership that presents itself can deliver those girls (Chibok schoolgirls) safe and sound, then, we will definitely negotiate to know what they want.”
In view of the innocent girls still in the terrorists’ den, Buhari’s qualified position on dialogue with the group is understandable. Yet, what the insurgents want is as clear as it is treasonable. Right from the outset, they wanted to create an Islamic caliphate out of Northern Nigeria; and return it to the antediluvian epoch. In August 2014, these rabid Islamists made good their intentions when they carved out Gwoza, a town in Borno State, as the headquarters of their “caliphate.” Before now, they had seized large swathes of territories in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, where they hoisted their flags, murdered over 20,000 people and created about 1.5 million Internally Displaced Persons.
In a video, the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, released in May this year, he put the sect’s mission in a capsule thus: We “need…to break down infidels, practitioners of democracy, and constitutionalism, voodoo and those that are doing Western education…” It is the group’s aversion to these ideals, especially education, that motivated them to turn over 200 schools in the North-East into smouldering ruins and hold the 219 Chibok girls captive.
No secular authority or state can pander to their irrational wish-list. As a matter of fact, a demand for negotiation with the state has always been part of a broad-range of wiles adopted by insurgents globally to buy time or demobilise their adversaries, each time they are at the receiving end. Nor are they faithful to any agreement entered into.
ADVERTISEMENT
This is evident in the three major peace pacts between the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban over the last decade, namely: the 2004 Shakai peace accord; 2005 Sarorogha peace deal and the 2008 Swat agreement. A Taliban leader, Nek Mohammed, had sought, under the 2004 pact, to recover from Taliban’s failed military campaign in Waziristan. And within days after the Swat deal was reached, which would have ended bloodbath in the region, the treacherous Taliban violently seized control of the Swat valley.
However, instances abound where the US, much against its own policy, negotiated with insurgents to free its nationals. In March this year, it swapped five senior Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for Bowe Bergdahl, a US Army sergeant held captive in Afghanistan since 2009. Qatar brokered the deal. Israel on several occasions has been involved in similar exchanges with Hamas jihadists. These cases notwithstanding, the US and Israel have not compromised their ideals or the fight against global terrorism. This is a lesson Buhari has to learn.
Therefore, sustaining the present momentum is critical. The recent interception of 4,000 drums and jerrycans of petroleum products being smuggled to the insurgents by its suppliers, after the Nigerian Air Force aerial assaults in some villages on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, is bound to curtail their operations. Besides, improvement in equipment and operational strategies since this year has given the military a noticeable edge over these genocidal fanatics. In February, for instance, no fewer than 300 of them were killed during anti-insurgency operations, just as the Sambisa forest is no longer their impenetrable fortress. Its invasion by Nigerian Army troops between April and May led to the rescue of a total of 453 children and women held captive for more than a year.
We believe that the country should continue to exert its military might on these felons until they surrender, rather than craving for dialogue. In 2011, former President Olusegun Obasanjo unilaterally made the first move to bring the bandits to a conference table with the government by visiting Babakura Fugu, the brother-in-law of Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram.
Enraged by Obasanjo’s visit and Fugu’s inclination towards a truce, the insurgents shot him dead a few days after. Also, under Goodluck Jonathan’s Presidency, official efforts were made, but they became avenues for fleecing the government by various committees, or by some groups that claimed to have had the power of attorney of the sect to negotiate, rather than as windows for reconciliation.
The most ludicrous was the one Stephen Davis, an Australian cleric, master-minded in 2014, in which he ended up alleging wildly that a former Chief of Army Staff, Azubuike Ihejirika, was one of the sect’s sponsors. The Federal Government swiftly dismissed his claim. After six years of engaging these mass murderers in battle, Nigeria ought to have fully decoded the sect’s character and evil ideology. The rogue group is an affiliate of global jihad championed by al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Its pledge of allegiance to ISIL in March does not show any inkling that it is ready just yet to end its bloody campaign against our nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment