….say negotiating with terrorists tantamount to supporting crime
Northern leaders have rejected a call by former Governor of Zamfara State,Malam Yerima Sani on President Bola Tinubu to negotiate with terrorists and bandits
Yerima had told the president to grant the bandits amnesty, as was the case with the Niger Delta militants by the administration of the late Umaru Yar’Adua in June 2009.
Rejecting the suggestion by Senator Yerima In their separate statements, the Northern leaders argued that such negotiations will continue to fail because the bandits have no central leadership and have breached previous agreements reached with some states and communities in the north.
In his statement, the Director General of Mzough U Tiv, MUT, and Chairman of the three socio-cultural/ethnic groups in Benue State, Chief Iorbee Ihagh, said, “The Government of President Bola Tinubu cannot negotiate with bandits and terrorists. These people were brought into the country from parts of West Africa to hold elections for some people in 2015. After they won the elections, they did not honor the deal they made with the thugs and that is why they launched into banditry and terrorism and ravaged the northern part of the country. Those who brought them into the country know themselves. They should be allowed to leave and clean up the mess they have created for Nigerians.
“I am pleased that President Tinubu has brought in people who are capable of dealing with insecurity in the country, unlike the previous government where nepotism eclipsed them. They wanted to turn Nigeria into a Fulani state, but God came to our rescue as a people. So there will be no negotiations and President Tinubu should never accept that. He started well and we praise him, but if he does that, no one will support him again. The government cannot go begging to the criminals, they must come and surrender.”
On his part, The Vice Chairman of APC Benue South District,Bishop Pinot Ogbaji, said, “When I heard the proposal by the former Governor of Zamfara State to advise President Tinubu to negotiate with terrorists and bandits, I was shocked. I know that in everything there is negotiation and dialogue, but negotiation means that we encourage that attitude and character. When you negotiate with a deadly group in the North, another group is likely to show up in another part of the country and seek to negotiate.”
“Let me ask: in what form and what kind of negotiation is he talking about? Is it to give them amnesty or what? Or of real repentance. We don’t even know how far the negotiation will go, we don’t know their demands. To me, negotiations are not an issue at all. Of course, there can be an amnesty that is not a negotiation. It means that someone voluntarily repents, then is brought back into the society of normal beings and reoriented.”
In a similar remark, the National President of the Middle Belt Forum, Dr. Bitrus Pogu, said, “If he is not one of them and he is trying to protect them, who else negotiates with terrorists? The problem we have been having is a Northern problem.
People in the North have taken Boko Haram and banditry as their own game. We have one person there, and although his choice is still controversial, it seems that this person will not tolerate a situation where people serve parochial interests rather than the Nigerian nation. And that’s what I think Tinubu is trying to achieve.
Negotiating with the terrorists means supporting crime and encouraging non-state actors to have the courage to come up and start something again in the future. The way forward is to crush them, to destroy them.
