BUHARI AND BOKO HARAM

A trail of disparate sentiments has expectedly followed retired General Muhammadu Buhari’s rejection of the offer to lead a truce between the dreaded and relentless terrorist group, Boko Haram and the Federal Government. The terrorist group had offered to have a dialogue with the Federal Government nominating certain eminent Nigerians including Muhammadu Buhari, as the head and Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim, former Governor of Yobe state,Ambassador Gaji Galtimari, and Aisha Wakili and her husband, Justice Zanna Wakili as members to represent it. 
WHILE some people, in the thrall of excitement of the expediency of peace, think that the proposal of the Boko Haram for truce was divinely ordered, irrespective of the details, others think that a more cautious approach that would study its details and implications was necessary for any meaningful truce.
IT was the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the political party under which retired General Muhammadu Buhari contested the last presidential election and lost that first gave inkling on how wrong  the Boko Haram’s proposal for truce could be. It denounced it as an attempt to link its candidate with the insurgency or insurrection in the country which the dreaded Boko Haram had spearheaded. To be sure, its logic seemed unassailable; if Buhari could broker a truce between the Boko Haram and the Federal Government, it could only mean that all along, he shared the confidence of the group and sympathised with it even as it traumatised the country and killed Nigerians. Not willing to live with that reputation, the retired General had politely turned down the offer. For him, it was absurd to broker peace or truce between the Federal Government and a group the membership and interests of which were unknown to him.
FOR certain people, his dissent only smacked of a lack of patriotism. If the retired General had put the interest of the nation before self, he ought to have jumped at the opportunity to mend fences between the Federal Government and Boko Haram. However, the view of former Plateau state Governor, Chief Solomon Lar, that the terrorist group should first unmask itself before any negotiations reverberates quite instructively. How can the Federal Government enter into any negotiation with an unknown quantity? How indeed should the terrorist group expect those it nominated to represent it if they have no knowledge of who their principals and what their interests are? If the Boko Haram has the exclusive choice of dictating the conditions for truce, what kind of negotiation can ever ensue from such an arrangement? And why should Nigeria’s peace be negotiated in Saudi Arabia especially as one of the touted grievances of the Boko Haram is the Islamising of the country? These are apposite questions due for consideration before the peace move on both sides can be meaningful.    
THE terrorist group has gone on to make demands that curiously leave out any consideration for their hapless and innocent victims. While it has been quick and insistent on the restoration of its losses, its proposals for peace did not include its victims who had been killed in its campaigns or their hopeless dependants. The disposition of the retired General Buhari must be understood against the background of the absurd style of the terrorist group in making its nominations of people to represent it in the negotiations.
PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan however has rightfully sealed speculations on the dialogue during his recent media chat when he said categorically that “the government is not in dialogue with any group not the least Boko Haram. They are still operating under cover. They wear a mask. They don’t have a face. You don’t dialogue with people you don’t know. We don’t have anybody to dialogue with.” That seals it and there cannot be a better attitude from any self-respecting government than that. We think that this attitude deserves the endorsement of all right-thinking members of the society.
NigerianTribune