More Nigerians have called on all stakeholders to rise and stop the proposed bill for the establishment of a federal agency for the rehabilitation and de-radicalisation of ‘repentant’ Boko Haram members, which has passed the first reading in the Senate.
According the sponsor of the bill, Ibrahim Geidam, the senator representing Yobe East under the All Progressives Congress (APC),the proposed agency would help repentant insurgents to “re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society.” He added that it would also promote reconciliation and national unity.
He further said that “The agency when established will help rehabilitate and reintegrate the defectors, repentant and forcefully conscripted members of the insurgent group Boko Haram to make them useful members of the society and provide an avenue for reconciliation and promote national security.”
The immediate past governor of Yobe State, further said that the bill “will also encourage other members of the group who are still engaged in the insurgency to abandon the group, especially in the face of the military pressure and enable the government to derive insider-information about the insurgency group for greater understanding of the group and its inner workings.”
“It will enable government to use the defectors to fight the unrepentant insurgents. It will help disintegrate the violent and poisonous ideology that the group spreads as the programme will allow some repentant defectors or suspect terrorists to express remorse over their actions, repent and recant their violent doctrine and in the long run, re-enter mainstream politics, religion and society,” he also said.
Despite widespread opposition to this bill, Geidam appears to have stuck to his guns, which has prompted more Nigerians to plan some protests against the bill.
Experts are horrified that a serving federal lawmaker will propose such a bill at a time the Boko Haram insurgency is still raging like wildfire even as they called on non-governmental organisations and civil society organisations to rise against the bill.
Speaking to BDSUNDAY, a security expert and columnist, Ben Okezie described the bill as very unfortunate, stressing that such agency will not work during the peak of crisis. He also condemned the idea of trying to de-radicalise already highly radicalised Boko Haram members.
“To de-radicalise them, you start from before they join the insurgency and not when they have entered. By the time they join the insurgency; their mind is twisted and made up. The ideology they have imparted into them is like opium just like Karl Max said that the opium of the people is religion. That is why they can shoot and kill anybody.
“We heard about a Boko Haram man while in operation, his mother was among those on sight and he just killed the woman. If you want to carry out this type of exercise, you wait until the war is over and they surrender just like the Niger Delta militants,” Okezie said.
He added that the attempt by the sponsor of the bill and those who allegedly back Boko Haram to compare the Niger Delta militants with Boko Haram insurgents will not work, arguing that the Niger Delta militants laid down their arms and the government sent a delegation and struck an agreement with militant leaders and based on that an amnesty was declared for them.
“The Niger Delta militancy is different from Boko Haram. Niger Delta is fighting for what belongs to their father land that they think that the Nigerian state is taking without compensation for them. But in the case of Boko Haram in the north, they have nothing to show that they are fighting for except religion and religion in the Nigerian constitution is a personal thing that should not matter to anybody.
“So, what this lawmaker is agitating for is completely wrong and this is the type of attitude that prolongs this war. Boko Haram should not be pampered and I will not support a situation where government will channel scarce resources to them.
“So, if a senator who we expect to know his right from his left is the one clamouring for this kind of bill, it IS an unfortunate situation. These are the people the government security agencies are supposed to keep close watch on and monitor them because they might have other motives.
“We have heard of how politicians sent money and other things to Boko Haram. So, they should stop this nonsense and stop making things difficult for our soldiers,” he said.
Okezie called on all NGOs and civil society organisations to stand up and confront that bill and stand against it, adding that there is an ulterior motive and the security agencies should look into it.
A Public Affairs Analyst, Katch Ononuju (PhD Economics), dismissed the bill as inconsequential, stressing that it will not see the light of day, because the sponsors are desperate but lack depth.
“That bill will not see the light of day. The sponsors of the bill don’t have the depth of intellectual interrogation; so, it should be ignored. They have destroyed Borno State and the north east. They will go nowhere with the bill and they will bear the weight of the insurgency which they have organised,” he said.
Another security expert and a columnist, Majeed Dahiru, said the only solution to the Boko Haram crisis is to address the root cause of it, which he attributed to disdain for Western education in the north and the quest to entrench the Islamic revivalism sweeping across the world.
“It is important to understand that Boko Haram is product of a uniquely northern Nigerian Muslim culture that holds western education in contempt and upholds the need for a jihadist revivalism in the contemporary world. These two factors combined birthed the Boko Haram insurgency. Whereas we have jihadist movement across the Middle East and North Africa, they do not abhor education they are simply struggling to revive puritan Islamism.
“But Nigeria has a twin problem of having a population that for several decades has been indoctrinated to hold western education with contempt and suspicion. They see Western education as a ploy of the Judeo-Christian World to convert Muslims to Christianity or Judaism. And this has now merged with the Islamist revivalist movements in the larger Muslim world.
“So, we now have a Boko Haram that on one hand represents a violent resistance to anything modern or western including education as well as an aspiration to install an Islamic state in place of the current and secular Nigeria’s multi-religious state.
“This is a product of a uniquely northern Nigerian Muslim culture. So, it has a hydra-headed dimension and until that culture is fundamentally changed from the grassroots across the north, Boko Haram will remain intractable because for every single jihadist you kill in the field, be rest assured that there are hundreds willing and able to replace that fallen Mujahideen,” Dahiru said.
Innocent Odoh, Abuja
