‘You can go’ (with the oil!)

Vanguard

6 February 2012

‘You can go’ (with the oil!)

By OCHEREOME NNANNA

AT last, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) met and spoke out since the Boko Haram terrorism received a turbo-charged boost from quarters that are gradually being exposed by our security agencies. The Forum’s tongue had been stolen by the cat (so it seemed) as the Al Qaeda-inspired foreign agents bombed, killed and destroyed in parts of Nigeria’s Muslim North.

Apart from their self-appointed media image launderers who obviously seek dialogue with the federal government on their behalf with a view to being given post-amnesty contracts (as is the case with the erstwhile media defenders of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND) all well meaning Nigerians had been unequivocal with their condemnation of these terrorists. Those who have stood on the side of Nigeria’s survival and development cut across ethnic and religious divides.

They have been unanimous in their conviction that in every part of the world (including the Muslim world) you don’t dialogue with religious fanatics or politicians masquerading under religion to kill innocent people. You annihilate them and later on look into what grievances they may be peddling. Even here in Nigeria, that had been the ways we solved the Maitatsine, El Zakzaky, and the first chapter of the Boko Haram uprisings.

The brutal repressions of these fundamentalists were done when Muslims (President Shehu Shagari, General Ibrahim Babangida and President Umaru Yar’Adua) were in power. Nobody then spoke about “dialogue” or “amnesty”.