Northern governors begin search for Boko Haram sponsors

Borno State governor and The Chairman, Northern Governors’ Forum, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, on Friday, inaugurated a committee consisted of Governors of the 19 Northern states to look into the activities of sponsors of Boko Haram so they can prosecute them.

While inaugurating the committee at the Hassan Katsina House in Kaduna, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, noted that the days of the deadly sect were numbered.

According to Punch, the committee, which comprises of the attorneys-general and commissioners of justice of the 19 Northern states, was given the task to flush these criminals out and deal with them according to the law.

Shettima said:

“The committee should also look at the condemnable activities of the sponsors of the insurgency and come up with legally pragmatic, appropriate and proportionate punishment.

“The committee should also focus specifically on parents, who because of some pittance, sacrifice their children as suicide bombers. Such parents must be made to face the full wrath of the law.

“The committee also has the mandate to carefully analyse the various emergent security challenges confronting the Northern states and determine how best to incorporate them into the penal code for proper and effective administration of justice.”

He added:

“The establishment of this committee is the direct outcome of one of the resolutions of the last meeting of the Northern States Governors’ Forum held here in Kaduna on September 11, 2015 to the effect that most of the criminal offences currently being perpetrated especially in this part of the country like kidnapping, cattle rustling and inciting religious preaching, inter-alia have either not been adequately covered by the penal code or not at all.

“Therefore it has become a matter of strategic imperative to review the existing criminal justice system in its entirety in order to ensure that it is up to date and consistent with our current situation.

“The Boko Haram insurgency, which has been raging on for the past six years, is one of the many serious security challenges we are experiencing.

“It has been generally agreed that one of the root causes of the insurgency was inciting preaching by the sect which inevitably stoked the violence and culminated in the extremely complicated and unconventional security situation facing this part of the country and in particular the North-East.”

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