UPDATE On Boko Haram: Northern elders insist on amnesty

The Nigerian presidency said it is not averse to granting.
The Northern Elders' Forum has called on President Goodluck Jonathan
to consider granting amnesty to insurgent groups in Northern Nigeria
in order to overcome security challenges in the country.
The main insurgent group in the North, BokoHaram , has claimed
responsibility for or is suspected of masterminding several attacks
across the northern states causing the death of hundreds of people.
The Elders' Forum made its position known on Wednesday at a
closed-door late night meeting held with the President at the State
House. The 25-member Northern Elders' Forum was led by the former
Nigeria representative to the UN, Yusuf Maitama-Sule.
Addressing State House correspondents after the meeting, the
spokesperson for the Forum and former Vice-Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello
University, Zaria, Ango Abdullahi, said that the meeting centred
mainly on national security.
"The contention here is that the country is facing challenges and I'm
sure you will agree that there are challenges in the country,
particularly in the area of security. That is the greatest challenge
the country is facing today and we spent a lot of times discussing the
various issues on security matters. On amnesty, what we discussed is
that the general opinion in the country is that amnesty should be
factored in to whatever the government is trying to do to overcome the
violence that is taking place all over the country and, particularly,
in most parts of the North.
"Fortunately, the president is already thinking hard on it and he
assured us that there is a special meeting on the matter tomorrow and
am sure that something substantial will come out of that meeting," he
said.
Mr. Abdullahi said that they were at the Presidential Villa as a
follow-up to an earlier visit last year where a memorandum was
submitted to the president on matters of the nation by the Forum. He
said that the president, after studying the memorandum, invited
members of the group for further deliberations on issues raised in the
submission.
Also, the Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, confirmed that the
group called for amnesty for insurgent groups.
"The issue of security also came up and the Northern Elders' Forum
brought the position that they believe government should consider
amnesty for the insurgents in the Northern part of the country. They
believe that it is the position the most northern elders presently
hold to enable them to exercise some influence in the process of
achieving peace in the northern part of the country. The president
said that government has never said that there will be no amnesty but
that there must be a process and structure if amnesty is to succeed.
"Again, we discussed extensively on the amnesty that took place in the
Niger Delta which attracted extensive discussions and the platforms
that were set up to discuss with the militants. In the case of the
North, amnesty cannot be granted in a vacuum. There must be a process,
there must be a structure and there must be a way of holding everyone
to account in terms of the amnesty process if amnesty is eventually
considered. Read more here:
http://premiumtimesng.com/news/128224-northern-elders-insist-on-amnesty-for-boko-haram.html