A defining moment for the Muhammadu Buhari presidency would be the day the
Chibok girls are freed from captivity and reunited with their tormented
parents. That would definitely end the drama, political controversies and
certain mercantile contrivances the macabre episode created. The world was
repulsed when some 200 plus female students set to write their final
examinations were herded into waiting trucks and ferreted into unknown
destinations. Finding the girls would effectively make Nigeria’s president
a hero. And the reverse would apply as well if the mirage is prolonged and
unresolved.
The world knows that the release of school girls abducted by the Boko
Haram terrorist sect on April 14, 2014 in Chibok, Borno State was one of
the sensational campaign promises upon which the repented ex dictator won
election last March. But like the president said in his Tuesday interview
with CNN renowned journalist, Christiane Amanpour, it is too early to
judge his performance in office. But there is some level of consensus that
the ugly abduction scandal should be treated with more urgency.
Fortunately, Buhari seems to be aware of the full weight of the pressures
of his promises especially with regards to freedom for the girls.
According to him during his inauguration speech, “we cannot claim to have
defeated Boko Haram without rescuing the Chibok girls and all other
innocent persons held hostage by insurgents. This government will do all
it can to rescue them alive.” The Chibok saga had sparked a worldwide rage
poured out on social media with one of the biggest campaigns of 2014 on
Twitter with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls circulated more than five
million times. In fact, a frontline campaigner for the safe return of the
girls both in the real and virtual world, Oby Ezekwesili, a prominent
former national official, underscores the burden on Buhari thus: “The
rescue of the Chibok girls would be the strongest statement this
government could make for having respect for the sanctity and dignity of
every Nigerian life.” Her group which champions the crusade for the
release of the girls recently met with President Buhari apparently to
receive assurances from the new occupant of Aso Rock that the girls have
not been forgotten in captivity. Former president Goodluck Jonathan
courted more controversies for his administration by refusing to grant
audience to the group.
It is therefore understandable that the president would concede as
suggested by Amanpour’s question, that negotiation with the terrorists was
not a foreclosed option provided it would buy the captives the much craved
liberty and by extension, put an end to the national embarrassment the
sordid Chibok affair threw the country into over a year ago. “If we are
convinced that we can have the girls, why not, we can negotiate. Our goal
is to have the girls. We will ask them what they want and we can free the
girls; return them to their school; unite them with their parents and
rehabilitate them, so, they can live a normal life,” Buhari told his CNN
host. He was also quick to add a caveat though: government would not be
stampeded into talks with boko haram until it is reasonably sure it is
dealing with the right leadership of the now amorphous deadly sect. “We
have to be careful about the credibility of various Boko Haram groups. You
need to be careful that you are talking to the right group,” he said
benefitting of course from hindsight where his predecessor in office was
hoodwinked into a fake truce with boko haram by persons of questionable
intents.
Media reports of possible talks between the government and representatives
of the sect have neither been denied nor confirmed by government.
Presidential adviser on media and publicity, Femi Adesina, had in a
cryptic reaction to the reports said the Buhari administration “will not
be averse” to talks with Boko Haram. “The new initiative reopens an offer
made last year to the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan to
release the 219 students in exchange for 16 Boko Haram detainees,” an
unnamed activist said to be fronting for the sect was quoted in the
reports.
These lines of apparent policy direction by the Buhari administration on
Boko Haram appear to be syncing with the advocacy of Borno State governor,
Kashim Shettima who has unabashedly canvassed and promoted amnesty for the
blood-sucking sect as a way of ending the reign of terror. The point is
not lost at all to keen observers that this governor was on the entourage
of the president to the United States for the just concluded state visit.
“Unless we want to engage in an endless war of attrition that will be
hallmarked by the continuing destruction of lives and property, it becomes
imperative that willing members of the Boko Haram sect that want to come
out of the bush must be given the opportunity to be de-radicalized and
then rehabilitated to become useful citizens of society,” the governor
said on the day of his inauguration into office for a second term. A call
as disagreeable as the complicit postures of the caller himself, amnesty
for boko haram is like awarding a medal to a serial rapist simply because
he has consistently escaped apprehension and still has his lethal balls
between his legs. That is not what candidate Buhari promised Nigerians
during the electioneering campaigns. He promised to liquidate the sect
into final capitulation. It is to that promise he will be held accountable
by Nigerians. Anything less would be tantamount to shifting the goal posts
in the middle of the game. The likes of Shettima can identify the
repentant vagabonds in their jurisdictions and offer them prizes for mass
murder. But the cry of justice by well-meaning Nigerians cannot be
outweighed by his uncanny and unthinkable proposition. The governor has
argued that “it is never easy to accept back into the community, those who
have taken up arms, killed, pillaged, raped and destroyed. But in the long
run, society must make very expensive choices for peace, reconciliation
and development.” But he fails to accept the fact that there can never be
reconciliation if the offending (read marauding) party stoutly declines to
accept his (devilish) culpability and be expressly contrite enough to
commit to refrain from his awful past in the search for genuine
forgiveness. It is Mr. Shettima’s cranky advocacies, puerile propositions
and complicit conduct (for instance in the sad Chibok kidnap when he
approved contrary to federal advice that the school girls proceed with the
exams without adequate security cover) that have muddled up any attempt to
have a coherent national narrative on boko haram as argued by this column
in a penultimate article. Now that the Borno governor has a “listening
president, who would be willing to assist us with utmost dispatch, to
accelerate our development” contrary to “a hostile (Jonathan-led) Federal
Government, which lived in denial about the savagery of Boko Haram and
which also saw the insurgency from the most perverted, narrow and
irresponsible prism, that somehow, the insurgency had been fuelled against
it, by the political and other elites of this part of Nigeria,” the
probability that President Buhari may fall for the amnesty proposal cannot
be dismissed. In retrospect, Buhari had before the campaign erroneously
compared the problem of boko haram with the challenge once presented by ex
militants of the Niger delta and had canvassed for amnesty for the sect.
But knowing that such line of argument would do maximum damage to his
quest to become president, he had (or seen to have) jettisoned such
clannish and narrow dispositions and promised to crush boko haram like he
did the Matatsine sect decades ago. Thus, granting amnesty would be
dismissing his own promise to crush the sect on assumption of office. And
that would also be quite contrary and hypocritical since he (and his
party, the APC) had consistently queried the dual carrot-and-stick
approach employed by the preceding administration. Any vitiation of his
resolve or taunted ability to bring the sect to its knees would erode the
worldwide acclaim which heralded his ride to power. According to renowned
Time magazine in its profile of Buhari when it listed him among the list
of 100 most influential people in the world recently, the president “now
he has to live up to voters’ expectations from battling the Boko Haram
insurgency to tackling endemic corruption.” The Chibok test case stares
him starkly in the face. And the world waits on him.
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