Boko Haram: FG can’t shy away from dialogue – Akpocha

DR Dafe Akpocha is the Director General, Centre for Democratic Governance in Africa, CDGA. In this interview, he maintained that convening a national conference will address the problems facing the country. He also faulted the call by Northern leaders for more derivation. Excerpts:

HOW will you assess the  insecurity level in the country presently?

The Boko Haram crisis is one thing that is being sponsored by some crop of people. The political class for instance, when they are contesting elections, they will use these youths during elections and dump them afterwards.

They will buy arms and ammunition for them to use, after that, how do you recover those arms back. Like in Libya, arms given to these youths have not been retrieved and even today if they have another government in place, they can rise against the government because of the ammunition with them.

*Dafe Akpocha

These are the problems with the political class, when you give weapons to fight your own selfish interest during elections, at the end of the day, how do you recover those weapons? These boys go home with the weapons and that is why issue of kidnapping and armed robbery cannot be addressed.

Thorn in the flesh

Now, Nigeria is having a big problem because Boko Haram has turned to the thorn in the flesh of Nigerians including Mr President, it has become a common phenomenon.  Personally, I will want to appeal to Nigerians especially the federal government to allow dialogue. The activities of the sect are taking too much of attention, government cannot be focused when it has serious security problems on its hands.

Northern demand for more revenue

Now, the Northern governors are demanding for more revenue , they want a review of the constitution especially as it relates to revenue formula.

If they are calling for more revenue, the question is how many states in the North are viable? With due respect, there are many states in the North that can’t survive without federal allocation.

We should look inwards because if there is employment. The Northern governors should look inwards and see ways they can increase their internally generated revenue to assist in the areas of development, they cannot continue to depend on federal allocation to achieve development.

For me, I think Mr President should set up a committee with eminent Nigerians from different zones who will be able to dialogue with the sect.  I think government should concentrate on ensuring there is peace and development in the country.

Are you saying dialogue is the only way out of the insecurity problem facing the country?

When the Niger Delta issue came up and it was becoming more severe, late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua opted for a military option and several militants camp were destroyed, a situation that left many killed and many homeless, up till today.

So if we say we are not going to dialogue, we are deceiving ourselves because even our security network has not been able to get a grip on these problems. Several arrests have been made and nothing came out of it.

So, there is no clear cut picture on how tackle insecurity yet because Boko Haram is backed by powerful and strong forces.