The Presidential Special Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of the Security Challenges in the North (otherwise known as Boko Haram Peace Committee) has been described as a huge scam and a scandalous contraption which ought not to have been set up in the first place.

Lamenting the spending of huge funds on the committee headed by the Minister for Special Duties, Alhaji Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN), the Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) yesterday called on President Goodluck Jonathan “to immediately disband the committee and demand that the members return to the public coffers all expenses incurred so far in the merry go round by this committee.”

In a statement endorsed by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said it would amount to grave disservice to public interest/good for members of the committee to continue parading around as genuine peace makers even after President Jonathan had put a lie to the sensational and widely publicised claim by the chairman of the panel that it had sealed a ceasefire agreement with Boko Haram.

HURIWA recalled that Minister Turaki’s claim of ceasefire was repudiated within 48 hours by Boko Haram leader, Sheikh Abubakar Shekau, who claimed in a 10-minute video that the group had no peace talks with the Nigerian Government.

“Besides, President Jonathan had in an interview with the United States of America-based Cable News Network (CNN) told the world emphatically that the Nigerian Government has no ceasefire talks with the armed terrorists group, Boko Haram, that has unleashed devastating bloody violence in parts of North East; North Central; North West and some parts of the nation’s capital of Abuja,” said HURIWA. “The President who was responding at the weekend to a question by the global television station said no such ceasefire took place. His words: ‘No negotiation, no. In some other parts of the World, I don'’t want to mention names here, it is not negotiation. The issue is that I am not begging....’ ”

“We as well as many other patriotic Nigerians have always expressed strong doubts on the ability of this presidential committee on restoration of peace and security in Northern Nigeria to actualise the mandate for which they were set up. The committee was inundated by the teething credibility crisis when some notable northerners declined membership of the panel on the ground of lack of consultation by government before the committee was set up and also because of their dissatisfaction with the way government allegedly mismanaged previous peace moves initiated by them with the dreaded terrorists group,” HURIWA added.

The said it believes that “Government has no business negotiating with mass murderers even when the same government has done nothing to ensure that the principle of rule of law is enforced strictly. Now that it has become clearer that the committee is a waste of public fund the government is hereby urged to disband this panel; retrieve the huge public fund wasted on this meaningless voyage of discovery and Government at all levels, should concentrate attention on how to strengthen the apparatus of law enforcement and ensure that the Federal ministry of justice and the state ministries of justice prosecute persons suspected of carrying out these heinous mass murders or government will risked being dragged to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, if it fails to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to speedy trial in the competent courts of w as enshrined in section 6 of the Nigeria constitution of 1999 [as amended].”

•Photo shows Boko Haram C’ttee members with President Jonathan.

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