By Dauda R Pam Maiduguri
The network for civil society organizations in Borno has called for the review of the triggers and the aftermath of the mass surrendering of Bokoharam terrorists, to determine its role as development humanitarian actors on the reintegration process to be adopted.
This was contained in the presentation of the state chairman of the NCSO, Ambassador Ahmed Shehu, at the interactive stakeholders security meeting held in MAIDUGURI over the weekend.
The NCSO state chairman, hinted that the over twelve years of insurgency has brought various issues of humanitarian tragedies in form of dislocation of families, truncàtion of dreams and rendition of several millions of citizens into internally displaced persons, IDP.
He used the occasion to call on government and security agencies to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the presence of community based organization to sensitise the populace and advised that the innocent among the insurgents should not be allowed to suffer for a that is not intentional but that should be thoroughly profiled and screened.
Similarly, the BORNO council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, has appealed to the federal and state governments of northeast Nigeria in collaboration with development partners and the traditional institution to draw a workable timeline that will be fully acceptable to the people for reintegration of the surrendered fighters because it is better to welcome the former fighters “without the guns than with the guns” as well as to avert reprisals by those injured.
They noted that there was the need for the country’s Armed Forces to interrogate the surrendered fighters to provide information on getting the weapons they used during their armed struggle.
According to the NUJ, adequate reconciliation process should be initiated at the community level involving traditional, religious and opinion leaders as well as government officials before the reintegration of surrendered fighters.
The memorandum, which was jointly signed by the NUJ State Chairman, Bulama Talba and Secretary, Ibrahim Mohammed, said there was the need for the federal government to overhaul the de-radicalisation process to focus on ideological re-orientation, equally there is the need to extend the programme to one year to adequately monitor them.
The submission also stated that all the surrendered Boko Haram fighters should be accepted in good faith in line with international best practices and religious injunctions to forgive war adversaries.
“They should be allowed to choose where to live and work or coexist such as their former neighbourhoods where everybody knows everybody’s dealings everyday and make it a law to punish anyone that harms those that have surrendered”.
“The children of the former fighters must be enrolled to public schools as condition to show true surrender to the tenets of civil society and cut the chain of saying western education is forbidden”.
“A regular meeting of key stakeholders on review of the reintegration process should be adopted along side constant mobilisation of the citizenry should be applied for mobilisation of the citizenry in every step of implementation of the reintegration process in collaboration with the press to make it a people oriented programme”.
And further suggested that for a way forward towards promoting lasting peace and recovery from the devastation of the insurgency, the media should be allowed to play its social responsibility role to the society by checkmating the possibility of the repentant fighters going back to criminality, while calling on the government to capture the biometric data of the repentant.
