One of the few people believed to have ways of reaching out to Boko Haram leaders yesterday said he will not participate in the presidential committee on amnesty because he is not convinced on the sincerity of the process.
Dr. Ibrahim Datti Ahmad, who had once led mediated talks between government and the Jama’atu Ahlis Sunnah Lid Da’awati Wal Jihad, said yesterday his experience in previous attempts to broker truce had left him convinced that “nothing good will come out of” Jonathan’s administration in respect of the crisis.
Ahmad is President-General of the Supreme Council for Shari’a in Nigeria (SCSN), which had then Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf as one of its leaders.
He was appointed on Wednesday into the 26-member Presidential committee on Boko Haram amnesty, which has Special Duties Minister Kabiru Turaki as chairman while a secretary will be appointed from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Speaking to Daily Trust by telephone in Kano yesterday, Ahmad said he will not participate because the government sabotaged previous peace efforts in which he was involved.
He said on two occasions he had participated in talks where members of the sect were ready to accept peace terms and end hostilities but that those efforts were “ruined” by the Federal Government.
“I have been in this for two previous occasions and on each occasion, the effort had been ruined by government. If government had played its role, the fighting would have ended by now,” he said.
During the botched efforts, he said, whenever the process reached an advanced stage where the government was only needed to support and encourage it, “it will not play its role.”
“Since it is the same government, I will not participate in a program which outcome will be mismanaged. They failed to work with what we mutually arrived at in the past, so I will not be part of this one,” Ahmad said.
“If they had played their role and worked on the results of our talks with Boko Haram members during last year’s fasting period, the violence would have been over by now. Therefore, it will not do for me to be involved for a third time since Jonathan’s government did not consider out previous recommendations.”
He also foreclosed any possibility of him reconsidering his position on the amnesty committee even if the government was going to introduce changes to its approach.
Asked if he has any advice to offer to other members of the committee, he said: “Why should I advise them after I have declined to be part of them? Let them go and test their brains. If I have any advice to offer, I will remain in the committee but because nothing good will come out of this government, I declined.”
Ahmad also spoke on the BBC Hausa radio yesterday, listing the conditions given by the sect last year and which the government repudiated after initially giving commitment to implement.
“Going by our initial interactions with them (government) I know they are lying. We reached a level in the previous discussions, what remained was just like tomorrow there would be peace,” he said.
Ahmed said the key demands of the sect were release of their wives and children from detention and easing of military operations in Borno and Yobe states to reduce the suffering of the people.
“So this shows that it was just a deception. I saw my name in the newspaper just the way everybody saw it…. The chairman of this committee is a serving minister while the secretary is a civil servant, this means that anything we say they are the ones to file it and submit to the government. And I have no doubt that what they will write is lies and write what government wants to hear,” he said.
Ahmad is the second to reject membership of the presidential amnesty committee, after Malam Shehu Sani said on Wednesday he would not participate.
Botched in 2012
Last year, Ahmad began mediated contacts between the Federal Government and the sect in March, trying to work out a ceasefire, but backed out after details of the process were published in the media. He said at the time that government exhibited insincerity by leaking information.
In May 2012, he spoke in more detail about the failure of the March efforts, saying the process was bungled by Jonathan’s principal private secretary Hassan Tukur, an allegation Tukur denied.
Ahmad told the Voice of America Hausa radio that he independently initiated the dialogue by writing to Boko Haram and then meeting with Jonathan who then delegated Tukur to oversee the process.
But according to him, Tukur, a former intelligence officer from Adamawa State, divulged the discussions to the media, consequent upon which the sect asked Ahmad to pull out because of what they called bad faith on government’s part.
“Hassan Tukur was the one who sabotaged the process by divulging all that we discussed to the press. The Boko Haram people said we should withdraw because they said there was lack of sincerity on the part of the government.
“They said in a previous similar peace attempt, they sent one of their members but that member was arrested. That was the end of the discussion,” he had said.
In his response, Tukur said: “What Dr. Datti said was not true…. When they came, I asked them to bring the list of their contacts in the Ahlussunnah i.e. Boko Haram, and they should tell us the ways and how to sit down for the dialogue with them. Since they left, they never came back.
“They never told us their Boko Haram contacts, nor the way to dialogue with them. He just appeared in the papers saying a government official revealed that the dialogue plans with Boko Haram. Nobody appointed Datti Ahmad, he brought himself.”
He said he was not even in the country when Ahmad and two other people met with President Jonathan, and he was later brought into the process by the president.
“In this dire situation that this country is facing I think it is incumbent on each and every Nigerian, especially of northern descent to make concerted efforts in quelling any problem in this country. But this position which Datti Ahmed decided to tow, to accuse some phantom government official of being the one against his move to negotiate with Boko Haram, is ill advised and unIslamic,” Tukur had said.
Daily Trust
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