• ACF seeks U.S. support, CAN opposes pardon

AFTER months of apparently weighing the option of granting amnesty to members of Boko Haram, the Federal Government has set up a special committee to further consider the possibility of the offer.
The members of the committee are drawn from security agencies. They have two weeks to meet and review the clamour for amnesty to be granted members of the group.
Also, Arewa elders have asked the American government to join forces with the Federal Government in putting an end to the escalating insurgency in the North.
Besides, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Thursday criticised the proponents of amnesty for members of Boko Haram, describing them as being insensitive to the plight of their victims.
The call for amnesty has become intensified since last month when the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III made it shortly before the presidential visits to Borno and Yobe states.
Though the membership of the proposed committee remained a secret last night, a top government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the panel would consider the feasibility of granting amnesty and come up with the modalities for implementing it if approved.
It is expected to work with the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and in two weeks, another meeting will be convened to discuss the report of the committee.
The source, who said nobody was authorised to speak after the security council meeting, stressed that President Goodluck Jonathan after his visits to Borno and Yobe states, never said government would not grant amnesty at all but “it will not do so to people who have refused to come forward.”
The source further noted that the amnesty proposition was a complex one just like the insurgency itself, but government wanted to demonstrate that as a listening leadership, it had heard all the clamour for amnesty for Boko Haram sect members.
The raising of the committee was preceded by a high-level security meeting earlier in the day chaired by the President with all the service chiefs as well as the inspector-general of police in attendance to discuss the increasing activities of Boko Haram members.
The meeting with the security chiefs came barely 24 hours after the President met with the northern leadership in the Villa where they restated the need for amnesty for Boko Haram members as the main pre-requisite for attaining lasting peace in the region.
The President was reported to have told the northern leaders that while the possibility of amnesty had not been ruled out, it had to follow due process.
In a brief interview with State House correspondents, the Minister of State for Defence, Olusola Obada, said the meeting focused on the insecurity and what could be done to check it.
The meeting, which lasted several hours, saw security chiefs avoiding the reporters, pushing the responsibility of who should talk to the press to one another.
Thursday’s meeting came hours after President Jonathan met the Northern Elders Forum on Wednesday night at the First Lady’s conference room in the Presidential Villa.
The elders were led to the meeting by elder statesman, Maitama Sule.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, Prof. Ango Abdullahi said the meeting was a follow-up to an earlier one on the invitation of the President.
Abdullahi declared that the elders restated the need for the Federal Government to grant members of the group amnesty.
“Yes, we discussed the security situation. We also insisted that amnesty should be one of the things to factor into the solution to the problem. Already, the President said a meeting would hold on Thursday (yesterday) on the matter.
“The area of contention includes the security challenges in the country. That is the greatest challenge the country is facing,” he said.
Also speaking with reporters at the end of the meeting, the Information Minister, Labaran Maku, said that the government was still consulting on the issue.
According to him, the conditions and modalities for the amnesty must be worked out before it is granted.
The conditions, according to him, include knowing whom to deal with. The meeting, he said, had been rescheduled to continue at a later date.
The Federal Government has always insisted that all conditions for amnesty must be met by the Boko Haram sect members.
Present at the meeting included Paulen Tallen, Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Kali Gazali, Safiya Mohammed, Solomon Dualung, Sheikh Ahmed Lemu and Shehu Malami.
Others were John Wash Pam, Lawal Kaita, Bello Kirfi, Paul Unongo, AVM Al-amin Daggash, Sani Zango Daura, N.A. Sheriff and Yahaya Kwande.
Also at the closed-door meeting were Saleh Hassan, Muslim Maigari, Bashir Yusuf, Gen. Paul Tarfa, Justice Mustapha Akanbi, Prof. Idris Mohammed, Captain Paul Tahal and
Captain Bashir Sodangi.
President Jonathan was joined at the meeting by his deputy, Namadi Sambo and some members of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) from the North.
The elders under the umbrella of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) said in Kaduna yesterday that they were not sympathetic to Boko Haram, but that they believed that the plea for amnesty for the group would have been a means of bringing them out for dialogue in the interest of the country.
They also said that the earlier stance of the forum on the abolition of the onshore/offshore dichotomy should be revisited and that the government should abolish the idea as it has encouraged lopsidedness in revenue allocation and created serious imbalance in development across the country.
The National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, Mr. Anthony Sani, told the Acting American Ambassador to Nigeria, Jeffery Hawkins, who led a delegation of American government functionaries to the ACF Secretariat in Kaduna, that the notion being held in many quarters that northern leaders were supporting the insurgency group was misplaced.
Sani explained that the Arewa elders’ call for dialogue was because of their belief that violence has never solved any problem anywhere in the world, adding that after applying force on the group without success, it was imperative for the government to look for another way of bringing them under control.
The CAN, led by its Secretary-General, Rev. Musa Asake, yesterday visited the two camps for Internally-Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the attack on two villages in Takad District  of Kaura Local Council of Kaduna State.
Addressing the victims camped at Model Primary School in Fadan Attakar, Asake lamented that instead of demanding the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators of such dastardly act, people, especially the northern elders, have been calling for amnesty.
He said: “Apart from outright illogicality of the proposition, the call was an outright insensitivity to the thousands of victims who had either died, been maimed or been displaced as a result of the ungodly activities of a group of dissidents. Here are innocent people driven from their homes and displaced from their loved ones for no crime. That is why I consider the northern elders calling for amnesty for Boko Haram members as insensitive.”