Presidency And Repentant N’Delta Militants

Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan, Mr. Kingsley Kuku recently ordered that militants who turn-in their weapons to the Joint Military Task Force in the Niger Delta should be arrested. This has got quite a lot of people worried.

Mr. Kuku’s reason was that the time for disarmament at the Niger Delta was over, as ex-militants were given up till October 4, 2009 to surrender. He gave the order after a group of repentant militants submitted their weapons to the JTF in Bayelsa State.

While the position of the Presidency on this matter cannot be faulted, the government cannot afford not to take some other considerations in dealing with this matter. Indeed, the government does not need to be told to rescind that order and perhaps encourage more youths to turn in their guns because of the opportunity it offers our country.

We want to suspect that the order may have been necessitated by the recent demands by more youths to be accommodated in the amnesty programme of the Federal Government for ex-militants. This, the FG does not want to entertain and for good reasons. Apart from the need to stick to rules, the FG may not have budgeted for the extra expenses that may come with this demand.

Even so, as the father of all Nigerians, the Federal Government cannot afford to be hasty or dismissive on this matter, especially because the security and safety implications it has for the country, its interests and people. The overriding need for public safety should indeed rule in the consideration of this matter.

For too long, the security of Nigeria has been threatened and experts have traced it to the proliferation of arms in the country. Rightly or wrongly, situations in the country have for sometime pushed fire-arms into the hands of the civil population. Indeed, the creation of regional militia in this country and the arms they control is common knowledge.

Only recently, even the United States of America came face to face with the danger of leaving fire-arms in the hands of too many civilians. Because of the spirit behind guns, people do not only shoot their neighbours at the slightest provocation, some mentally unstable people now go to schools and kill innocent children in their numbers and for no reason.

Security experts have also traced the seeming endless violence and brazen confrontations in Syria and even Egypt to the quantity of arms in the hands of the civil population. Indeed, apart from the influence of guns in such conflicts, their use in armed robbery, assassinations, kidnapping and even rape cannot be quantified.

These are only some of the reasons why the Federal Government must encourage Nigerians and, especially, youths in stressful environments to turn-in their weapons and be relieved of the temptation to do things with loaded guns that they certainly would regret.

The Tide thinks that while some youths may have suspected the sincerity of the Federal Government Amnesty programme, at the time, some may actually be repentant now and may have found the possession of the guns rather burdensome. On either accounts the government must come to the rescue of these youths.

We think that even if such repentant youths cannot be fully integrated into the Amnesty programme, something should be given to them for a lot of good reasons. Knowing the cost of those weapons, even if government decides to buy such guns from them at good price, Nigeria would be buying back peace, safety and security at levels that cannot be imagined.

Indeed this consideration should be open to all Nigerians whose level of patriotism or understanding of the love of Christ may have buoyed up to the extent they decide to turn a new leaf and give u p their guns. A country that has had very little success keeping guns from coming into her borders, should see this as an opportunity to mop-up guns and lessen security challenges in the country.

But we must not fail to note that the decision of some youths to surrender their guns shows the success of the FG Amnesty programme, on the one hand, and the growing efficiency of the Nigerian military in dealing with internal conflicts on the other. But all these may be lost if the system takes things for granted and allows violence to find easy expression in the country.

We think that the Federal Government should stop at nothing to reduce the proliferation of arms-in Nigeria. Our country must learn from the experiences of other countries and nip-in-the-bud the creation of a trigger-happy generation. There should never be a ceiling on when and how citizens should surrender arms to the authorities. But more important is the significance of the whole idea. It suggests that they now have faith in the government to protect them.