Amnesty to Boko Haram: Lawyer asks court to stop Jonathan

Barely 24-hours after President Goodluck Jonathan inaugurated the Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, an Abuja based legal practitioner, Mr. Silas Onu, Thursday, approached the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, asking it to abort plans by the Federal Government to grant amnesty to the Boko Haram Islamic sect.

Besides, Onu, who maintained that granting amnesty to the sect would entrench a very dangerous precedent in the national polity, also prayed the court to issue a consequential order halting the continuation of amnesty programme across the country.

He urged the high court to go ahead and halt further payments to ex-militants in the oil rich Niger Delta region were President Jonathan hails from.

It will be recalled that the federal government had in June 2009 approved an offer of unconditional amnesty for members of the Niger Delta militants.

The government, on Wednesday, inaugurated a 27-man committee with a mandate to fashion out modalities with a view to getting insurgent groups in the Northern part of the country to embrace amnesty.