Gen(rtd) S-Y Bello(l)(then JTF Commander) with outgone CDS, ACM (rtd)PAUL DIKE(c)in the Niger Delta,2010
THE GUARDIAN
19 February, 2013
FOR the Federal Government to engage in direct negotiations with Boko
Haram, the group has to constitute a credible leadership or its leader Ibrahim Shekau has to publicly renounce violence and embrace dialogue as a path to peace.
This was the position of the Federal
Government as articulated Monday by
the National Coordinator of Counter
Terrorism and Insurgency in the Office
of the National Security Adviser (NSA),
Maj.-Gen. Sarkin Yakin Bello.
Bello also disclosed that the country
would soon set up a National Counter
Terrorism Centre that would serve as a
processing centre for all intelligence,
which would address the peculiar security challenges of the country.
Bello said at the National Defence College, Abuja while addressing visiting
top United States military leaders and
their Nigerian counterparts that Nigeria
had a primary interest in the
containment of the terrorists in Mali as the country had been providing safe
haven for the Boko Haram elements in
Nigeria.
Noting that membership of the terrorist
groups also included nationals drawn
from Niger, Chad and Cameroun, Bello
declared that “to finally solve the Boko
Haram challenge in Nigeria, the umbilical cord between it and other terror groups need to be broken. And
that is what is happening right now in
Mali. Most of the insurgents in Northern
Nigeria come from Mali. So, we have a
primary interest to contain the terrorists in Mali. There is a containment interest, which is in our national interest. That (Mali) is where Boko Haram members get their training,funding and bases. They are well established there.”
Explaining that the Federal Government
was not averse to negotiating with the
terror group as a way of bringing peace,
Bello said that “if a credible leadership
shows itself, government is ready to
negotiate with them. If (leader of the Boko Haram sect, Ibrahim) Shekau can
come out, using his usual medium, to
renounce violence, the government will
be ready for the dialogue.”
He stated that of all forms of terrorism
in different parts of the world including
the United States of America and Israel,
that of Nigeria was peculiar. “I have not
seen any country as challenged as Nigeria. For Nigeria, it is people like me, people like you, living in the same area, with same language that are the members of the Boko Haram. They live
among us. Some are our cousins”, he
said.
