National Assembly should not toy with citizens’ emotions

The fresh attempt by the National Assembly, particularly the Senate, to resume the consideration and passage of a bill that would grant amnesty to repentant Boko Haram members and other terrorists in Nigeria is a joke taken too far and must be roundly condemned.

Specifically, ignoring persistent public outcry against the release of the suspected insurgents, the Senate in February this year began a legislative process to grant amnesty to terrorists. This, the lawmakers plan to achieve by passing a bill tagged “National Agency for Education, Rehabilitation, De-radicalisation and Integration of Repentant Insurgents in Nigeria 2020, SB. 340.” It was sponsored by the immediate past governor of Yobe State, Ibrahim Gaidam, who now represents Yobe East Senatorial District in the National Assembly and read for the first time on the floor of the Senate on 20th February, 2020. Following wide-spread criticism that greeted the introduction of the bill, it was kept in the cooler. But feelers have it that the Senate is set to resume deliberations on this controversial bill.

It seeks to give immediate legal backing for repentant insurgents to be integrated into the society with the following as its main objective “to provide an avenue for rehabilitating, de-radicalizing, educating and reintegrating the defectors, repentant and detained members of the insurgent group, Boko Haram, to make them useful members of the society. It also aims at providing an avenue for reconciliation and promoting national security”

Is it the duty of the national assembly to make laws to compensate criminality and punish those who abide by the rules? Indeed, one might be tempted to ask if ours is a national assembly or assembly of non-nationals.

Ironically, this is happening at a time the House of Representatives is taking delivery of foreign-made vehicles against locally manufactured ones. Are the honourable members oblivious of the prevailing economic situation in Nigeria?

In a country where people can’t feed with $1, that is N450 in a day, the members of House of Representatives are spending about N5 Billion to purchase 400 pieces of vehicles at the cost of almost N40 million per car.

It was learnt that proponents of this legislation believe that the Boko Haram suspects, who had inflicted unprecedented torture on and killed thousands of innocent citizens, particularly in the northern part of the country, should be made to enjoy same benefits as those of ex-Niger Delta militants who were granted presidential amnesty by late Umaru Yar’Adua

Whereas victims of the Boko Haram attacks had remained substantially neglected in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps to the evils of rape, hunger, malnutrition and other socio-economic vices, the Federal Government has turned its attention to providing safe havens for those who maimed and killed. About 1.7 million people have been displaced in Borno state alone with a value of the damage in the state put at about $9.6 billion. About 60,000 children are orphaned. Only God knows how many children are out of school, have no access to water, food and means of livelihood. The humanitarian crisis that is coming after the war may be more dangerous than the war itself. The insurgency is going into its 11th year. Some children haven’t been to school in the last 10 years and we know what that means.

As a nation what do we tell the children of the victims who for no fault of theirs have found themselves in overcrowded internally displaced people’s camp because their parents were killed by Boko Haram and the same state that cannot guarantee their safety wants to compensate the killers of their parents with foreign education and we expect such kids not to take up arms against the state tomorrow?

What would we tell the parents of Leah Shaibu or the mothers of the abducted school girls in Chibok and Dapchi majority of whom are still in captivity till today, or the parents of the boys who were slaughtered in their sleep in a secondary school in Bruniyadi to do?

How do we dance on the graves of our service men and women, some of whom died carelessly in the fight against terrorism? If our lawmakers don’t want Nigerians to see them as supporting terrorism they should not only jettison the bill but strive to make laws that would promote unity, equity, welfare, peace and justice to all Nigerians.

That this bill was accepted for consideration in the national assembly speaks volume about the characters we have in government.