Boko Haram: Can Salkida, Shehu Sani Negotiate End To Insurgency?

When recently the federal government announced a ceasefire with the Boko Haram sect, I was among many Nigerians who was sceptical of the deal.

First my apprehension was heightened by the fact that the ceasefire deal was announced a day before the final grand rally by the pro-Jonathan group, the Transformation Ambassadors of Nigeria(TAN). It was initially believed that it was at this final rally that President Goodluck Jonathan will finally declare his intention to seek for a second term of office which had been at the centre of TAN’s campaign. In the twits I sent shortly after the deal was announced I warned that Jonathan would be committing the biggest blunder if he was to declare his candidacy at the last TAN rally. First it would mean that the president wants to use the ceasefire and the release of the Chibok School Girls for political gain. To the credit of the president he shunned the rally.

My second apprehension was also confirmed when I read twits from Ahmed Salkida and comments by rights activist Shehu Sani both of whom expressed doubts over the purported ceasefire. And when Salkida and Sani expresses reservations over issues on Boko Haram, I usually takes them serious, but sadly government often appears to have scant regard for their views.

It would be recalled that it was Shehu Sani that brokered the meeting between the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and some key members of the Boko Haram sect in Borno State. Even the government is aware of Shehu Sani’s capacity to reach out to the group which informed the decision of the federal government to include him among members of a committee set up to negotiate with the group in the past. Sani however declined to participate on the grounds that he was not consulted before his name was included in the committee and secondly he expressed reservations over the sincerity of the federal government to bring an end to the insurgency.

Ahmed Salkida is a journalist and from Borno State, the epicentre of the Boko Haram sect’s insurgency. In the course of his work as a journalist, Salkida has met the late leader of the sect Mohammed Yusuf and some of its key leaders and it had been alleged that the sect trusts his impartiality. He was also said to have been involved at a stage in the negotiated release of the abducted Chibok Girls which was botched. Salkida was among those who faulted the Australian negotiator, Steven Davis who claimed that Boko Haram commanders told him that former chief of army staff, Lt. General Ihejirika and former Borno State governor, Senator Alimodu Shefiff were among the sponsors of Boko Haram. Salkida like Shehu Sani insisted that no Boko Haram commander will reveal the sect’s true sponsors.

With Salkida and Shehu Sani’s apparent understanding of the philosophical underpinning of the sect and what can be done to effect a peaceful resolution of the insurgency especially as it is becoming increasingly apparent that the military are finding it difficult to defeat the sect at the battle field, why are they not being wooed by government to help broker a lasting solution to this protracted orgy of killings?