Northern elders insist on amnesty for Boko Haram members

Details: Written by Abdullateef Abubakar Jos

The 25-member Northern Elders’ Forum was led by the former Nigeria representative to the United Nation, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama-Sule.
Addressing State House correspondents after the meeting, the spokesperson for the Forum and former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, said that the meeting centred mainly on national security.

"The contention here is that the country is facing challenges and am sure you will agree that there are challenges in the country, particularly in the area of security.

"That is the greatest challenge the country is facing today and we spent a lot of times discussing the various issues on security matters.

"On amnesty, what we discussed is that the general opinion in the country is that amnesty should be factored in to whatever the government is trying to do to overcome the violence that is taking place all over the country and, particularly, in most parts of the North.

"Fortunately, the president is already thinking hard on it and he assured us that there is a special meeting on the matter tomorrow and am sure that something substantial will come out of that meeting," he said.

Abdullahi said that they were at the Presidential Villa as a follow-up to an earlier visit last year where a memorandum was submitted to the president on matters of the nation by the Forum.

He said that the president, after studying the memorandum, invited members of the group for further deliberations on issues raised in the submission.

Also, the Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, confirmed that the group called for amnesty for insurgent groups.

"The issue of security also came up and the Northern Elders’ Forum brought the position that they believe government should consider amnesty for the insurgents in the Northern part of the country.

"They believe that it is the position the most northern elders presently hold to enable them to exercise some influence in the process of achieving peace in the northern part of the country.

"The president said that government has never said that there will be no amnesty but that there must be a process and structure if amnesty is to succeed.

"Again, we discussed extensively on the amnesty that took place in the Niger Delta which attracted extensive discussions and the platforms that were set up to discuss with the militants.

"In the case of the North, amnesty cannot be granted in a vacuum.

"There must be a process, there must be a structure and there must be a way of holding everyone to account in terms of the amnesty process if amnesty is eventually considered.

"The president said that no one has ever said that there will not be amnesty but there must be certain conditions for amnesty to be useful in the process of using it as a mechanism for achieving peace as it relates to the Boko Haram insurgence,said Maku."

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