Amnesty deal for Boko Haram members won’t work —CAN President

PRESIDENT of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has said the Federal Government should not waste time pampering the Boko Haram sect members, because the amnesty deal would not work.
He stated this in Abuja, on Thursday, when he was given an award by the Christian Elders Forum of Northern States (NOSCEF).
Oritsejafor said that the arrogant and deriding manner with which Boko Haram had dismissed the amnesty deal, coupled with statements from the sect’s spokesman, Abu Qaqa, had both reinforced CAN’s stance that the only interest of the sect was to eliminate Christians and enforce an Islamic state in Nigeria.
He called on President Goodluck Jonathan not to waste tax payers’ money on a futile exercise.
The cleric tasked the president to be wary of some Muslim leaders in the North and their few Christian allies, who always come to Abuja in droves to seek regional concessions with religious biases.
“The president should be wary of those who kept mum when Odi and Odioma in Bayelsa State and Zaki Biam in Benue State were destroyed by soldiers, but now want heavens to fall when Baga village came under military attack,” he said.
He also tasked the president Jonathan to be wary of those who kept mum when General Muhammadu Buhari and other Muslim leaders in the North said the country would be made ungovernable if he became president in 2011, but wanted him to arrest Alhaji Mujahedeen Dokubo-Asari for repaeting what they said earlier.
“If we agree that poverty, injustice and inequality are the causes of the insurgency by Boko Haram, a largely Islamic group, the question would be: are Muslims the poorest people, the most deprived? What about Christians? Can we say injustice and inequality, as they say, is limited to Muslims alone?
“Can the claim of poverty be justified if the weapons and arms being used by the sect is calculated in terms of naira and kobo? Where is the justice when the Almajiris have special schools built for them and none for the Christian children in the North and South?
“Where is the equality when most government parastatals, the staffing is heavily skewed in favour of a particular religion? With amnesty to the bargain for the Boko Haram sect members, would Christian youths, whose fathers have been killed, benefit? Yet justice is an open wound, only truth can heal it,” he said.
Oritsejafor further stressed that CAN still believed in peace and would continue to work for peace.