Deal With Insurgents First, Talk With Them Later – Obasanjo

The Boko Haram insurgent group has “legitimate grievances,” so Nigeria should not rule out talking to the terrorist group, but only after a sustained military campaign against them, according to former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has said.

Obasanjo, who spoke yesterday in an interview with IBTimes, UK, on the sideliners of the Global Education Forum conference in Dubai, UAE, said that both carrot and stick approach was needed in dealing with insurgent group, which recently pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS) and has killed about 17,000 people, including kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State, many of whom remain in captivity.

The former president said that while 79% of Nigerians in the South-West of the country received education and 77% in the South-East, the figure is only 19% in the insurgency-hit North-East.

He therefore called for a total military action against the insurgents, adding that once progress had been made on that front, Nigeria should not rule out engaging in dialogue with the militants.

“If Boko Haram is ready to talk, we should talk. But by the time they are ready to talk, they will need to be pounded a little bit militarily: at that stage they will be ready to talk,” he said, adding that they may have legitimate grievances.

“We don’t need anyone to tell us that, that is a problem – a problem of disparity; a problem of marginalisation; a problem because education is fundamental to your employability, to your living conditions. If you are not educated you are handicapped,” he said.

He criticised the current administration of President Goodluck Jonathan for failing to act fast enough in taking the fight to Boko Haram, a failure, he said, emboldened the sect to spread to neighbouring Chad and Cameroon.

“The response of the government initially was definitely not enough. When Boko Haram started showing their fangs about four years ago, the reaction should have been firm and unmistakable. We have lost ground,” he said. (Leadership)