Reviewing amnesty for terrorists

THE Chief of Army Staff, Major-General Taoreed Lagbaja, has dismissed the amnesty programme for bandits and terrorists as a bad policy that has failed to achieve the set purposes in many states. In a statement he made to the governor of Zamfara State, Dauda Lawal, who paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja on July 12, Lagbaja claimed that the beneficiaries of the programme saw it as an opportunity to get pardoned, regroup and carry out more attacks. Thus, the amnesty programme is not working in the war-torn areas because the criminals have proven to be incorrigible. “Amnesty has created avenue for them to regroup and reorganise to launch attacks on our defenceless citizens. So, I think we need to look at that,” he said.

We think there is a need to review the policies and programmes that have been instituted to tackle the security challenges in the country.  The essence is to identify measures that have worked and those that have failed. This will enable the government to reorganise the strategies and approaches required to effectively address the security challenges. It will also enable the government to finetune some of the measures to make them more effective and efficient. It has become clear that advocates of blanket amnesty like ex-Governor Ahmed Yerima are wrong.  The approach flies in the face of logic and the empirical reality. Their position has not panned out as effective. This means that a more effective and innovative basket of ideas is called for to address the issue.

The amnesty programme has made the terrorists to perceive the government as weak. Given the reckless abandon with which they torment innocent citizens, they must feel the wrath of the state. To be sure, the government treated the so-called repentant terrorists well but many of them only got worse. Now, the terrorists have become even more emboldened. They attacked and brought down military helicopters in the past. The government needs to be firm; it must not act from a position of weakness. General Lagbaja has called attention to the reality of many of the criminals supposedly covered by the amnesty programme exploiting the situation and taking advantage of the government’s benevolence to commit further terrorist acts, leaving people to wonder what exactly the programme was meant to achieve. Many people also wonder why the government has kept criminals in their criminal acts.

The onus is on the government to ensure that criminality does not become a profitable venture through the amnesty programme. It is the duty of government and the society to punish criminality as a way of discouraging it. Criminality must not be treated with kid gloves. We expect the government to undertake periodic reviews of its counter-terrorism programmes. This is an essential part of finetuning them, learning lessons and introducing innovations from the lessons learnt. Of course, we recognise that it is proper for the government to deradicalise and rehabilitate former terrorists who are prepared to turn a new leaf.  Nonetheless, it must determine the extent to which such measures are working to rehabilitate those involved in terrorism towards integration with the society rather than further entrenching them in criminality.

The government’s overall aim is to put a stop to terrorism. While fighting terrorism could sometimes involve structures of carrot and stick as depicted in the amnesty programme, it is undeniable that the primary response to terrorism and those in it needs to be the capacity to enforce the demands of peace on them on behalf of the society. This is an irreducible objective that must not be sacrificed on the altar of a malfunctioning amnesty programme. Furthermore, since Nigeria has ample experience in amnesty implementation, the government must draw on implementation lessons, especially from the amnesty programme in the Niger Delta.  It must benefit from the factors that accounted for the areas of success, issues associated with implementation of the programme, and factors that hampered success. It must benefit from the experience in dealing with banditry and terrorism elsewhere in the world, especially African countries.

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