In September 2004, I was involved in a heated argument with a man who was my boss and benefactor. We were having an argument over a policy that had just been pronounced by the Obasanjo Government. My Oga was angered because he could not see why a middle management cadre secret service agent would write a memo faulting the position of the all powerful President of Nigeria, a war veteran who won a war for Nigeria, former Minister, former vice military Head of State, former Military Head of State and an elected President in his fifth year of office.  My loving boss considered my opposition to the Commander-in-Chief’s plan as borne out of inexperience and the decision to express  my view in writing as childish.

The issue at stake was Obasanjo’s Amnesty for Niger Delta Militants and the arms for money policy.

I was vehemently opposed to the grant of Amnesty to people who in my view took up arms against their nation. I felt that granting amnesty to self confessed murderers was worse than negotiating with terrorists. My position was that the Military should be strengthened to win the war or force the militants to sue for peace rather than offering them amnesty in a manner that conveys the impression that the Nigeria Military was incapable of combatting them. I felt that Obasanjo was setting a bad precedence that would encourage more people to take up arms against the nation.

Although I never led a nation in times of war or during peace time like Obasanjo whom my boss felt was incapable of making any mistakes, I was well armed with deep knowledge of the intricacies of insurgency from my very robust counter intelligence trainings and  the vast array of books that I read. I could tell that Amnesty without remorse was a bad precedence which Nigeria would  regret.

My position was clearly not popular at the time. Obasanjo’s office, age, seeming experience and supposed wider knowledge outweighed my feeble inexperienced principled arguments. With a scribble of his green pen, then President Obasanjo opened the doors to the grant of Amnesty to men and women who were brave enough to take up arms against the state. Other Nigerian leaders at the sovereign and sub sovereign levels have followed that precedence. Yar Ardua explored a similar scheme to end to the ‘MEND’ led insurgency in the Niger Delta. In 2012, then Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State granted Amnesty to Osisikanlu and his rebellious Bakkassi boys to stop kidnapping and banditry in Abia State. There was amnesty in Ondo State in 2018 after the Ikorodu mayhem. In 2019 conversations with bandits in Zamfara and Sokoto States for the grant of amnesty began as a way of ending cattle rustling and banditry in the two states.  There have also been reports that , the Nigeria Military rehabilitated and released supposedly repented Boko Haram militants into the society without presidential pardon or judicial pronouncement. The military big guns used their discretion to exercise judicial and presidential power without recourse to the law or to any bloody civilian. That’s how low we have descended.

When I read the reactions of some Nigerians to a proposal for establishment of  an institution for the rehabilitation of Boko Haram members, I’ve had to ask what the hullabaloos were about. What’s new? Is anyone expecting that a day like this would not come? Given that Nigeria is a nation where actions are inspired by gains of resource sharing, the argument for such institution has a precedence. If you could have one with annual budget of over eighty billion Naira for Niger Delta Militants why can’t we have one for repentant Boko Haram militants? Militancy is militancy. ‘Shebi’ Oyibo people talk say ‘wetin good for the geese suppose good for the gander’. if you can have one in the South why shouldn’t we have one in the north?

Precedents have been set and we may never recover from it. Our leaders have long been telling our youths to embrace arms struggle because It is more beneficial to be criminally in Nigeria than be law abiding. The fact that repentant militants in the Niger Delta earn a ‘pittance’ of N65,000 Naira monthly as pension for their invaluable short spell in the creeks whereas law abiding civil servants are still  looking up to the heavens for payment of 33,000 Naira minimum wage, is evidence that our  leaders would rather compensate criminals than those who toe the path of the law. That seeming posture of our government is enough to encourage any one to ask that a scheme similar to the Niger Delta Amnesty program be introduced for Boko Haram adherents. The quest is only following a well set precedence. Rather than bad bellying those who sought to benefit from a bad precedence, we should accept that our gallant hens have come home to roost. My only fear is that one day our government may convoke a round table meeting to discuss the terms for  grant of amnesty to armed robbers. That day may not be too far away.