The Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF) yesterday forged ahead with its plan to apprehend and prosecute alleged sponsors of the Boko Haram sect, which has terrorised much of the northern states and neighbouring countries for six years.
The NSGF inaugurated a committee to “look at the condemnable activities of the so called sponsors of the insurgency and come up with legally pragmatic, appropriate and proportionate punishment.”
It is made up of the Attorneys-General and Commissioners of Justice of the 19 northern states.
The Forum Chairman and Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, said at the committee inauguration in Kaduna that the days of the insurgents are numbered, considering their dislodgement from their strongholds by the military.
Essentially, the Attorneys-General/Commissioners of Justice will review the criminal justice system in the north as agreed by the governors during their last meeting in September.
They are also mandated to conduct a “thorough and meticulous review of the Penal Code as it exists with a view to pointing out its weaknesses and constraints in the overall administration of Criminal Justice System in the Northern States. ”
Besides,they will undertake a “careful analysis of the various emergent security challenges confronting the Northern States and determine how best to incorporate them into the Penal Code for proper and effective administration of justice”
Governor Shettima said this is in view of the complex problems of insurgency, cattle rustling, armed robbery, inciting preaching, and kidnapping confronting in that part of the country.
He said the existing Criminal Justice System in the North is not up to date and is inconsistent with our current situation.
He said: “The Committee should also focus specifically on parents who, because of some pittance, sacrifice their children as suicide bombers. Such parents must be made to face the full wrath of the law.”
He added:”The Boko Haram insurgency which has been raging on for the past six years is one of the many serious security challenges we are experiencing. It has been generally agreed that one of the root causes of the insurgency was unlicensed and inciting preaching by the sect which inevitably stoked the violence and culminated in the extremely complicated and unconventional security situation facing this part of the country and in particular the North-East.
The attendant consequences of the insurgency is the resort to the abduction and conscription of vulnerable and innocent people particularly school children. The case of the Chibok school girls has been universally condemned and still fresh in our mind. Although not widely reported in the media there have been series of abductions of innocent people by the Boko Haram insurgents.”
He hailed President Muhammadu Buhari for his achievements in the security sector,saying: his “dogged commitment and unwavering determination to ensure that the insurgency and its concomitants effects were totally eradicated within a specific time line are beginning to bear quite an appreciable degrees of success.”
The committee which has two months to complete its assignment is tasked with “a thorough and meticulous review of the Penal Code as it exists with a view to pointing out its weaknesses and constraints in the overall administration of Criminal Justice System in the Northern States; a careful analysis of the various emergent security challenges confronting the Northern States and determine how best to incorporate them into the Penal Code for proper and effective administration of justice;and make any other recommendations the Committee deems necessary in the course of its assignment.”
