Abuja, Nigeria - The last may not have been heard of the Boko Haram episode as a group, Tawheed Initiative for Good Governance and Accountability (TIGA) has accused the federal government of sponsoring a mass killing of innocent young men, women and children on the pretext of uprooting the troublesome sect.
In a release entitled "Boko Haram: the culpability of Mr. President", and signed by its chairman, Dr. Adam Ahmad Abere, legal adviser, Barr. Sadau Garba, and publicity secretary, Mal. Aliyu Shehu Ibrahim, the group condemned what it described as the government's selective approach to social deviants in the country, saying that the Boko Haram mayhem could have been settled peacefully but for the order given by President Yar Adua to crush the sect.
The group, which also heaped blames on the Sultan of Sokoto, whom it said was contradictory in his comments on the mayhem and the subsequent killing of the sect's leader, traced the Boko Haram phenomenon to 1895 when the British invaded the Sokoto Caliphate.
The Kaduna-based group said, "Since 25th July the world has been inundated with the so-called Boko Haram episode. Some people, especially the elite, felt, and genuinely, too, that a group using Islam as a platform can successfully wage a war against western-designed education and could even go ahead and protectively arm itself against the Nigerian state.
"Between July 25, 2009 when the crisis broke out in Bauchi State and August 6, 2009 when the report of the government's killing of Sheik Muhammad Yusuf's in-law came in, more than 1,000 Muslims were killed by agents of the Federal Government in Bauchi, Kano, Yobe and Borno states. Most of them were young men, women and children.
"While at TIGA we do not support Sheik Muhammad Yusuf's style of rebelliousness against the state, we feel that as violently dramatic as the episode was it is typically inconclusive.
“Not only should Nigerians, especially Muslims, penetrate beyond government's claims and media reportage on the consideration, intent and philosophy of the group, they should be scientifically cursory about the corrosive and grossly over-killing method used by Umaru Musa Yar’Adua's government in solving the problem
“We are stupefied by the contradictory positions taken by His Eminence, the Sultan, JNI and Nigeria Inter-religious Council (NIREC).
“In one breath, the Sultan commended the Federal Government and the security agencies for promptly containing the situation of the criminal activities of a devilish group called Boko Haram while in another he condemned the killing of the leader of the group in police custody in what appears as an extra-judicial killing ".
The group, which also condemned government's double standard seen in its engaging the Niger Delta militants in dialogue and granting them amnesty but massacring the Boko Haram sect, called on the president to apologise to Nigerians for the massacre of youths and to the Muslim Ummah for deliberately decimating its population.