Leader of the Northern Civil Society Coalition and Senator representing Kaduna Central Senatorial zone, Senator Shehu Sani in an interview with SAXONE AKHAINE speaks on the recent onslaught by Boko Haram insurgents in some parts of the country, Buhari-led government’s effort to end the menace, the allegation by the military that the Northern leaders are sponsoring the insurgency and others.
Do you support the clarion call for the ban of hijab among muslim womenfolk?
It is not possible to ban hijab which is the muslim religion’s attire in Nigeria. Because one girl simply laced herself with bombs and detonated it in the public does not mean every girl wearing hijab is also a terrorist. Terrorists do not need hijab to cover a suicide belt or bomb. He or she can even wear suit.
So all the bombing that is happening, many of those carrying it out are not wearing hijab, they wear traditional attire. I will not support the ban of hijab among muslim faithful. There is no connection between hijab and the detonation of bombs. There is no correlation between wearing of hijab and suicide bombing activities.
The insurgents seem to have intensified their activities in light of the recent bombings in Abuja, Maiduguri and Yobe. What is your assessment of the situation?
What we are facing today, as a nation, is part of what the whole world is facing in recent times. It is a battle of our generation, as well as of the entire world. Terrorism is not peculiar to Nigeria. Suicide bombings, attacks, and mass murder are also being experienced by countries like Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and even in Indian administered Kashmir. Even developed nations of the world are not insulated from these attacks.
We are fighting an unconventional enemy. An enemy whose weapon is himself, an enemy who knows he is not going to emerge victorious; all that he wants to do is to inflict maximum damage.
Terrorists are people who have stood up against our peace, our unity, our values and also our future. They will continue to reoccur until we are able to fight them to submission. We must embrace the fact within ourselves that in as much they want to kill, they want to fight us; we should also be able to resist them and also defeat them. The struggle of the 21st century is a struggle of the soul of the world against terrorism and terrorists.
Nigeria is having its own quota of this kind of values. In Africa, other than Somalia, Nigeria is one country that is most affected by this acts of terror, even though we have seen what happened in places like Mali, Somalia and other parts of Africa. So, what we are going to do differently is simply to unpopularize this war instigated by Boko Haram.
Defeating terrorism and terrorists can only come in two ways. The first way is what I call the peoples’ war. People’s war is a war that is carried on by the citizens of a country in conjunction with their own army. If you look at what is happening in Iraq today, the local militias, the Quad are achieving more successes in terms of fighting the ISIS than even their Army. And if you also look at happenings in Afghanistan you will still see that each time people organize themselves as a people, supporting their military, they end up at achieving their aim.
The only way to achieve this goal is to achieve a synergy of professional army and a conscientized and mobilized people against these acts of terror. This seems to be the only way. And there is also the need for the entire country to be conscious of this war. If you live in the suburb of Abuja you have to be as prepared as people living in Maiduguri, Burungala, Damaturu and Yobe.
Do you think Nigeria has strong laws to curb terrorism in the country today?
Laws are needed, but new laws are not so necessary at this very point in time. Nigeria has enough laws to bring culprits to book and for us to also ensure that those who violate the laws are adequately punished. But, what we are facing now is a war, a war between a group of anarchists and extremists who are armed against a state that is democratic and secular and a republic. So, we must take this war as a war against our unity, our stability, our future and democratic values. We can make as much laws as possible, but it is not the numbers of laws that we make that matters, but how we can apply the laws we have to the usefulness of our country and society values. And laws are like tools, they are like implements that farmers use.
A good government is necessary for the use of good laws. All the laws we have made in the past have not been made good use of. Sadly, those that we constitutionally empowered to use the laws aren’t actually using them judiciously. So, we have enough laws to take on terrorism, what we don’t have enough of, is the will power to take it on and the capacity to resist terrorism for so long. I think we must put it in our mind that we are going to fight this war to a logical conclusion and we must win it.
How will you compare the present government to the immediate past one in the handling of Boko Haram insurgency?
We should first of all prepare ourselves to continue to fight this battle until we are able to achieve victory at the end. It is pertinent for all Nigerians to take this battle as theirs. The insurgency that began from Maiduguri spread like a cancer, to the northwest, north central and some parts of southern Nigeria, and this people have the capability to reach out to any part of Nigeria.
The difference between President Buhari’s approach to the war against the insurgency to that of Goodluck Jonathan were so many.
First, under former President Jonathan, he lacked the political will to fight the insurgents; but Buhari has the will power to fight. Under Jonathan the military was ill equipped and unmotivated, which led to a lot of soldiers deserting their duties. Under President Buhari, the army is relatively well funded, the morale of the army has been boosted, and you can see that many of those unjustly discharged from the army were recalled.
Under former President Jonathan, the government lost credibility, lost support and solidarity from the international community. Under the present dispensation, the government enjoys the support of the global community and pledges and assistance in terms of winning the war against terrorism. Under Jonathan, our neighbouring countries were skeptical about sharing intelligence and information, however, under Buhari today, it is not so. The government of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and others, have shown zeal and determination to work with this administration and defeat the insurgents.
The military recently alleged that some powerful northerners were behind the sponsorship of Boko Haram. What is your take on this?
If this allegation is factual, why can’t the military come out with the names of those financing the terrorists? They should also go after them and provide the Nigerian public information on how they finance the group. But, if you simply say some northern leaders are behind the sponsorship of Boko Haram without naming them, then all you have succeeded in doing is to cast aspersion and suspicion on all people and elders of northern Nigeria. And this is very wrong. So, who are these elders in the North? Elders have names, name them, shame them and bring them to book and let them be treated as criminals.
Wide allegation is nothing but lies and misinformation, falsehood and blame shifting as well as an attempt to find scapegoats for your inability to achieve your goal in defeating insurgency. So, I will prefer that the names of these persons be mentioned, especially this period when the country is trying to overcome this problem of terror.
You were once part of the negotiating process in the past to end Boko Haram insurgency. Now that you are a Senator are you still disposed to the same process?
My intervention before I became a Senator was simply to contribute to peace so that we can bring the insurgency to an end. This is going by the fact that this insurgency has demonised our country, threatened our freedom, democracy and peace. That was simply the inspiration behind my intervention.
All I tried to do were in two fold: first of all, to see how we can end the insurgency through the use of dialogue and in light of this, I reached out to terrorists.
Second and most importantly the rescue of the Chibok girls. Sadly, the former government was not ready to look into the demands of the terrorists. The people whom they wanted to be released in exchange for the release of the hostages that were with them, were not the people that the government was prepared to release. That has always become a problem to us. So, I am saying that this time around, we can still revive the process of talking. If I am invited, I can still get involved in terms of finding solution to this problem. But first, I must extract commitment from both sides.
When you decide to enter negotiation, you must be ready for concession, because even if you sit down 1,000 times, you wouldn’t make any headway without concessions. If the government is not ready to release some of their members, the insurgents are not prepared to release hostages or make a cease-fire commitment. That is why I say that commitment for a ceasefire from both sides is very important.
Furthermore, under the last administration, it was not possible to get the Chibok girls released or extract a ceasefire promise, because on two, three occasions, the government violated agreements, when they said they were not prepared to release the insurgents they arrested, whom they said had committed heinous crimes.
