NUJ State Chairman, Comrade Bulama Talba
By SADIQ ABUBAKAR, Maiduguri –
The NUJ Borno State Council has called on 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 to avert reprisals by those injured.
They also noted that there was a 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.
Borno State NUJ in its memorandum presented at the interactive stakeholders security meeting held in Maiduguri, said an 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 jointly signed by the NUJ State Chairman, Comrade Bulama Talba and State Secretary, Comrade Ibrahim Mohammed, further, said there was the need for the federal government to overhaul the de-radicalisation process to focus on ideological reorientation, 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 religious injunctions to forgive war adversaries as stipulated in the Holy Quran without option of refusal as commanded to the Holy Prophet of Islam Muhammad peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.
“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”.
The union also suggested that for a way forward towards promoting lasting peace and recovery from the devastation of the insurgency, the media should be okay 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 repentants for intelligence purposes.
On his part, The State Chairman of Network for Civil Society Organizations, Ambassador Ahmed Shehu, said there should be a need for the review of the current conflict dynamics to determine the triggers and aftermaths of the mass surrender, discuss existing strategy with a view to understand the gaps and identify the roles of the humanitarian and development actors on the reintegration process.
Borno State Chairman of Network for Civil Society Organizations, Ambassador Ahmed Shehu,
Amb. Shehu noted also that the over 12 years of insurgency has brought several issues to the communities which includes humanitarian tragedies in the form of dislocation of families, truncation of dreams and rendition of millions of innocent citizens into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP).
The Chairman added that it would be recalled that Borno State Government through its various engagement with partners has expressed its readiness to promote the acceptance and reintegration of repentant non-state armed groups into society. Perhaps, a lot of commentaries and mixed-feelings have gone into the analysis by people who are against such efforts.
He, however, called on community members to understand the effect of the insurgency and appreciate the peace recorded, hence, the need to embrace any opportunity that will ensure the attainment of peace.
“Government and security agencies should also exploit and take advantage of the opportunity presented by the presence of community based organizations in the communities to sensitize the populace while Innocent among the insurgents should not be allowed to suffer for a cause that is not intentional, they should be appropriately profiled and screened those found innocent should be systematically engaged, sensitized, supported and release”.