Boko Haram committee, a huge scam – Rights group

The Presidential Special Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of the Security Challenges in the North, headed by the Minister for Special Duties, Alhaji Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN), has been described as a huge scam and a scandalous contraption, which ought not to have been set up in the first place.
This assertion was made just as a call for the umpteenth time has gone to President Goodluck Jonathan from a democracy friendly
Non-Governmental Organization, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, to immediately disband the committee and demand that the
members return to the public coffers all expenses incurred so far in
the ‘merry go round’ by this committee.
In a statement endorsed by the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss. Zainab Yusuf, the rights group said it will amount to grave disservice to public interest and good for the presidential committee to continue parading around as genuine peace makers even after Jonathan had put a lie to the sensational and widely publicized claim by Turaki that the dreaded armed sect, Boko Haram, had signed a ceasefire with effect from the commencement of the Holy Month of Ramadan.
HURIWA recalled that the Nigerian Minister of Special Duties had
curiously bypassed the Nigerian electronic and print media to speak
with Radio France International whereupon he informed the world that
the nation had signed immediate ceasefire with the armed terrorists
responsible for the dastardly criminal atrocious acts of mass
killings; selected bombing attacks of government security institutions and Christian worship centers/churches, including the killing of moderate Muslims, which have so far claimed over 5000 lives of innocent Nigerians.
The Special Duties Minister’s claim of ceasefire was later within 48
hours to be repudiated by the leader of the dreaded armed Islamic
rebels, Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, who claimed in a 10-minutes video
recording that it has no subsisting peace talk with the Nigerian
government.
Besides, President Jonathan had in an interview with the United States of America-based Cable News Network told the world emphatically that the Nigerian Government has no ceasefire talk with the armed terrorists group that has unleashed devastating bloody violence in the North.
The President, who was responding at the weekend to a question by the
global television station, said no such ceasefire was in place.
His words; “No negotiation, no. In some other parts of the world, I
don’t want to mention names here, it is not negotiation. The issue is
that I am not begging….”
The Rights group stated thus; “We as well as many other patriotic
Nigerians have always expressed strong doubts on the ability of this
presidential committee on restoration of peace and security in
Northern Nigeria to actualize the mandate for which they were set up.
The committee was inundated by the teething credibility crisis when
some notable Northerners declined membership of the panel on the
ground of lack of consultation by government before the committee was
set up and also because of their dissatisfaction with the way
government allegedly mismanaged previous peace moves initiated by them with the dreaded terrorists group.
“We believe that Government has no business negotiating with mass
murderers even when the same government has done nothing to ensure
that the principle of rule of law is enforced strictly.
Now that it has become clearer that the committee is a waste of public fund the government is hereby urged to disband this panel; retrieve the huge public fund wasted on this meaningless voyage of discovery and Government at all levels, should concentrate attention on how to strengthen the apparatus of law enforcement and ensure that the Federal ministry of justice and the state ministries of justice
prosecute persons suspected of carrying out these heinous mass murders or government will risked being dragged to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherland if it fails to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to speedy trial in the competent courts of w as enshrined in section 6 of the Nigeria constitution of 1999 (as amended).”