By Sani Tukur/Premium Times
Nuhu Ribadu
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The best strategy to contain the Boko Haram insurgency is a healthy blend of dialogue combined with the use of force, says Nuhu Ribadu, the Presidential Candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria, in the last election.
Mr. Ribadu, one of the leaders in the All Progressives Congress, APC, said since the government has many of the Boko Haram insurgents in custody all over the country, and since the group is “continuously setting off bombs and carrying out attacks,” it is unhelpful, from a security perspective, to characterize them as ghosts.
The former anti-corruption czar, speaking to PREMIUM TIMES on phone, Monday, is also taking a sensitive review on whether insurgents of the Boko Haram sect deserve amnesty as many in the northern states of the country are currently canvassing.
Ribadu said: “The President should not completely foreclose the possibility of dialogue with the sect, claiming they are ghosts” arguing that the sect members can’t be ghosts because they have in the past offered to dialogue with the administration.
Dialogue, Ribadu argued, offers an atmosphere beyond technical definition of amnesty because, he said, “it will equally ensure justice to all concerned, especially the victims of the insurgency.”
He also said things had “gone so bad in the country at the moment and if the president does not act right, the country may be plunged into another civil war, out of the general decay in the land and not even on account of the Boko Haram insurgency” that, he admitted, is now ravaging most of the north eastern states of the country, and a few of the north western states, particularly Kano.
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