Communities displaced by insurgency and banditry from their ancestral homes are the ones to be rehabilitated and reintegrated as against t**rorists and bandits that are responsible for their pain and plight.
Senator Istifanus Gyang The Senator representing Plateau North Senatorial District, Istifanus Gyang, has called on his colleagues to reject the bill seeking to establish an agency for the rehabilitation and reintegration of repentant Boko Haram insurgents and bandits.
The lawmaker equally said the bill, which was mentioned and has passed first reading is not only uncalled for but “as**ults the sensibility of Nigerians in view of the fact that most of the victims and communities affected by insurgency, banditry and violent a*tacks are still languishing from neglect and lack of the much needed government attention and intervention despite repeated calls”.
Gyang disclosed this through his Special Adviser Media and Protocol, Musa Ibrahim Ashoms in Jos, the Plateau State Capital, saying the proposed legislation has made t**rorism become a permanent feature to feed and sustain the activities of insurgents.
Gyang posits that, “Communities displaced by insurgency and banditry from their ancestral homes are the ones to be rehabilitated and reintegrated as against t**rorists and bandits that are responsible for their pain and plight.”
The legislator lamented at the irony where care and attention for t**rorist take precedence over and above that for the victims.
“This is inconceivable, incongruous and offensive to good conscience and equity”, he maintained.
According to him, “Attempts at certain quarters to compare and equate Boko Haram t**rorists with the Niger Delta Agitators which attracted the Presidential Amnesty Initiative and Program under the administration of President Yar’adua, is ludicrous.
Adding that the Presidential Amnesty Program was not a product of legislation, but of government policy, which has remained so.
“It was an intervention program with a time line and terminal date unlike the Pro Boko Haram Bill, which intends to create an agency that will exist in perpetuity.
Gyang, who is Deputy chairman, Senate Committee on Defence further stated that, “By the proposed legislation, terrorism becomes a permanent feature to feed and sustain the activities of the agency which can best be described as “t**rorist breeding agency.
“The Bill is simply an attempt to use the National Assembly particularly the Senate, to acquiesce, placate and incentivize t**rorism.
“I’m calling on all Senators to reject the Bill given its obvious negative implications for the security of the nation. To do otherwise is to incentivize t**rorism and put the nation in perpetual harm’s way”, he stressed.
