WHILE the dust raised over the nomination of former Head of State, Lieutenant-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), to lead the dreaded Boko Haram sect in dialoguing with the Federal Government is yet to settle, one of the nominees for negotiation by the group, Senator Buka Ibrahim, on Wednesday, stirred the hornets’ nest as he said people were being forced to partially sponsor the sect.
Senator Ibrahim, while contributing to a motion sponsored by Senator Kabiru Marafa on banditry attacks on Kabaru Village in Mau Local Government Area of Zamfara State, accused security agencies of allegedly killing more people than Boko Haram.
According to him, the Boko Haram sect had succeeded in frightening people into submission but many other people were now partially sponsoring the activities of the group as a way of preserving their lives in a helpless situation.
Ibrahim said he deliberately stopped talking to the press so that he would not become the subject of attacks, adding that: “Today, people are being forced to partially fund Boko Haram. They kill one, two or three people and frighten everybody and now everybody is succumbing to their demands.
“But the security agencies are the number one killers. I was surprised when the other day the Chief of Army Staff said Boko Haram killed 3,000 people. Security agencies have killed more than 3,000 since this thing started. On the first day that this crisis erupted in Maiduguri, over 5,000 people were killed.”
The Senate President, Senator David Mark, who presided over the sitting, after directing the Police Affairs committee to look into the allegation, said the Senate would do everything possible to ensure that the high level of insecurity in the country was reduced.
He stated that the security agencies often find themselves in a difficult situation when people refuse to give information about assailants, adding that, “it is not for me to defend or speak for the armed forces but the armed forces find themselves in a very difficult situation when they have to do internal operations or street to street fight.”
“What I would suggest is that in areas where we have this type of problem, people must give us information as much as possible and as quickly as possible because once you kill a member of the armed forces, the natural reaction is for them to do what perhaps is happening now.
“For the police, I think you should give them as much information as you can provide, but serious allegations have been raised here and I hope that the Committee on Police Affairs, National Security and the Army will take up some of these issues.
But Senator Ibrahim insisted that, “it is the activities of security agencies, particularly the police, which pushed the Boko Haram people to the wall. They killed their leaders, killed thousands of other innocent people. That is what forced them to come out against the Nigerian state.
The Tribune
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