Senate President David Mark yesterday declared that
he regretted his earlier call for dialogue with members of the Boko Haram,
adding that it was time to go to war with the insurgents.
In February, President Goodluck Jonathan
constituted an eight-member committee to renew negotiations for a ceasefire,
amnesty and demobilisation of members of the Boko Haram sect.
It was reported then that the committee was to work
confidentially. This means that the media will not be briefed of happenings or
level of progress.
However, Mark yesterday stated that since the Boko Haram sect was not ready for
peace talks, the federal government would do what is necessary.
The senate president described yesterday’s motion
as the most emotional issue ever debated since his membership of the Senate in
1999.
“I have spent many years in the Senate here and I’m
not sure there is any motion that has had so much emotional touch as this one.
I think Ndume just managed to hold himself and the three Senators who spoke
also. I think the issue is not so much as to whether Boko Haram is even in the
country now or not, but that 234 girls could disappear and up till now, none
has been rescued. The 53 who are back escaped on their own.
“The story that Ndume narrated about soldiers going
in the wrong direction when they got the information is a clear indication of
what we are in for. The people we are dealing with are well trained. They are
not terrorists, they are insurgents.
“All along, we have been reactive; if we are not
proactive, we cannot deal with it. I have been in the forefront of saying we
must dialogue with them but I think we must take the battle to a level where
they must beg for dialogue. We cannot do this unless the locals on the ground
there cooperate with members of the armed forces,” he said.
“There is no doubt that our nation is at war. The enemy has clearly and
unequivocally served the nation notice of its vile intentions. Therefore, a
clear, unambiguous and decisive military response from the government, beyond
the imposition of a state of emergency, is urgently required in this
circumstance. This is an option we must consider now.
“It is obvious that we are dealing with insurgents
and well-funded nihilists who are determined to violently trample upon the
secularity of the Nigerian State and destroy the country. A modern, vibrant,
progressive, multi-ethnic, multi-religious Nigeria is an anathema to them
because they are fired by zealotry and extremism, they are not likely to be
swayed by overtures of any kind. We must henceforth shift from fighting
terrorism to fighting insurgency.”
“Our emphasis must therefore be on winning the
hearts and minds of the communities in the immediate theatres of conflict. The
full might and strength of our security services must now be deployed to
confront this scourge and we expect our security services to rapidly re-orient
their assets and capabilities so as to overcome this difficult challenge, and
this must be done within the shortest possible time frame with minimal
casualties. Let me emphasise that for them to achieve this they require the
cooperation of all and sundry.”
“The government must do all it can to immediately
identify the sponsors and the source of funds to the terrorists and the
insurgents. In this connection, nobody who is implicated, no matter how highly
placed, should be treated as a sacred cow.
“The breadth and scope of this assault on the
Nigerian state makes for sombre reading; places of worship have been violated;
pupils have been brutally murdered en masse in their dormitories; schoolgirls
have been brutalised and kidnapped from their schools; police stations and army
barracks have been attacked and incinerated; lives and properties have been
destroyed and whole communities uprooted and made refugees in their own
country,” Mark stated
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