Since the introduction of the bill, criticism has trailed the Senate for allowing such on its floor.
Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, has urged the Nigerian Senate to kill and bury the bill seeking to rehabilitate, pardon and grant undue privilege to repentant terrorists in the country.
The bill titled ‘A Bill for the Establishment of the National Agency for the Education, Rehabilitation, De-radicalisation and Integration of Repentant Insurgents in Nigeria and for other Connected Purposes’ which is presently on the floor of the upper chamber of the National Assembly and sponsored by Senator representing Yobe East, Ibrahim Geideam, had scaled first reading.
Since the introduction of the bill, criticism has trailed the Senate for allowing such on its floor.
In his reaction, Ozekhome said that the proposed law by the Senate to rehabilitate repentant Boko Haram terrorists was madness taken to its very ludicrous zenith.
He said, “It's an unfortunate confirmation of the long held view that this government has been treating Boko Haram insurgents with kid gloves, if not outright smooching and embracing suggestive of close affinity or patronising consanguinity.
“How can lawmakers establish an agency for the rehabilitation of alleged repentant members of a murderous organisation which has since been declared as the third deadliest terrorist organisation in the world?
“How will they distinguish between genuinely repentant ones and those pretending to have repented, but nonetheless playing along to wreak further maximum damage to an already devastated populace?
"It is morally reprehensible and ethically odious to reintegrate into the society with taxpayers money, earth-scorching killers daily destroying the very essence of humanity, walking literally on hot crimson blood of savagely butchered Nigerians.”
He also noted that the bill would be unfair to the soldiers daily combating the terrorists and to the family of those who have been killed and kidnapped by the Boko Haram sect.
“This Senate that appears idle,visionless and rudderless should save us further denigration, opprobrium, ridicule and embarrassment, by dropping this ill-advised, ill-conceived and ill-digested retrogressive bill and face the current challenges daily threatening Nigeria's survival and assail her very existence.
“How unfair can such a bill for the memory of those thousands of soldiers cut down in their prime while fighting this societal scourge of rampaging marauders?”