By Henry Ibya, Makurdi
Benue State Government has denied allegations from some quarters that the present administration’s request to host a Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration,DDR,camp in the state is meant to rehabilitate Boko Haram Terrorists and repentant bandits.
Making the denial on behalf of the State Government while reacting to the allegations during a media briefing yesterday in Makurdi, Director- General, Benue Commission for Peace and Reconciliation,Mrs Josephine Haba explained that the much talked about DDR programme, is meant for Benue children who have been forcefully recruited into criminality and taken to the forests by local bandits, adding that the target is not Boko Haram or bandits from Sokoto, Nasarawa, Taraba or Zanfara as insinuated by merchants of falsehood.
Haba who described as misrepresentation on the part of those circulating such narratives clarified further that, the commission whose responsibility is to ensure peace working on the directives of the governor to find out the root cause of crisis and killings in the state, swung into action through formation of a committee with active involvement stakeholders including the the Bishop of Katsina-ala Catholic Dioceses, Isaac Dugu which identified some issues.
She stated that outside the herders farmers conflict, the committee discovered other pocket of crisis especially in Logo, Ukum and Katsina-ala Local Government Areas that were fuelled by children of those communities, describing the Sankera crisis particularly as home grown.
Haba alleged, the committee discovered during investigation that women, youths and other people carrying out their legitimate businesses like Okada and drivers who had never involved themselves in criminality were innocently abducted in markets, homes and taken to the forrest against their consent to run errands for the criminals.
According to the D/G to address the situation, governor Alia in 2024 with some members of the committee set to bring peace, met with the stakeholders including the Bishop who had previously worked on his own to ensure that peace return to the area and in the cause made some findings.
Haba said during the meeting the Catholic Bishop presented to the governor about 1800 people forcefully abducted from markets and homes while carryout their businesses such as Okada and others to work for the criminals.
According to Haba, those people were taking into the bush to do dirty jobs such as cooking,buying food items,drugs and other things in normal markets since the criminals themselves felt could not come out openly for fear that they will be recognized and possibly arrested or killed.
” We said Your Excellency,as you can see not everything in the bush are criminals. I particularly told the governor, there’s no way I will say a criminal should go without justice but some of these people are not criminals.
” Then the governor said to the Catholic Bishop of Katsina-ala,if you truly know that these people are repentant and want to come out of the creeks, and are not people who were criminals before now, I will grant them amnesty using the carrot approach, that is the genesis of the amnesty programme”, Haba said.
She explained further that after the declaration in Katsina-ala,her office set up a committee that carried out shadow assessment with about 1177 out of the 1800 who they truly discovered had never had any record of criminality but were taken to the bush by force volunteered to return home to commence normal activities.
Haba said during their interaction with those category, all of them pleaded that government should help them to go back to their homes to restart their lives as farmers.
” As a government we said what can we do? Because any human being that has lived in the bush for more than 2 months becomes an animal, these people have stayed in the bush for years. There is no way you bring them back and dump in their communities, they will not be accepted ” Haba said, adding that the DDR approach adopted by the government is to correct what those who came back home have learnt as criminals before handing them over to their communities.
She said government is afraid of sending them to camps in Zanfara, Borno or Nasarawa to receive training along side hardened criminals to avoid situations where they could even learn more terrible things that will cost more harm to the society, explaining that the DDR centre being sought for by the state government will bring benefits to the state, dispelling insinuations that it is a camp to rehabilitate Boko Haram repentants.
