Give amnesty to Boko Haram, kidnappers – Ozekhome

We are told you are putting together the details of your ordeal in a book?Yes I will have to do that for posterity and I have to write my book; ‘In the Kidnappers Den, an Eyewitness Account.’Many Nigerians have gone through the ordeal of falling victim of kidnappers and their captors are still all over […]

We are told you are putting together the details of your ordeal in a book?
Yes I will have to do that for posterity and I have to write my book; ‘In the Kidnappers Den, an Eyewitness Account.’
Many Nigerians have gone through the ordeal of falling victim of kidnappers and their captors are still all over the place, but only days after your release your captors were in court facing trial, what is it that makes your own case different?
Yes, I must say that I feel very special in the sense that with God, all things are possible. When I was touched I believed that my God definitely was not happy about it and I refused to curse my kidnappers and I refused to seek vengeance.
So what I did was to shift the entire burden unto God because God will fight when you submit a situation of helplessness unto him showing that you are not capable to go alone in the battle, then he takes over the battle from you. But when you say that you are capable he might as well say go ahead and let’s watch it. Things that had happened had to happen, to God be the glory.
There are some states in the federation already making laws to check kidnapping. What is your take on the death penalty?

To start with I do not want to begrudge any state that imposes the death penalty for kidnapping as their own perception to stem the tide. But I must say that as a human rights activist,  and legal adviser for Amnesty International in Nigeria for many years, I have never as a person supported the death penalty. One of the 10 Commandments of God is, “Thou shall not kill”, he did not qualify it. He did not say you can kill under some circumstances; it is man that has qualified it.
For example under our criminal and penal code, you may kill in self defense; in defense of your property; under a mistake or by accident; you may kill in a state of drunkenness, when your reason has vacated the seat. But all these to me are man-made laws, the law of God is ‘thou shall not kill’, that is number one reason. Secondly, when a life goes, there is no way of replacing it. Life is irreplaceable. That is why in America, the greatest democracy in the world, it has been found that many people sentenced to death and were actually executed were later found to be innocent.  The question is how do you make restitution? It is not possible.

Then thirdly the death penalty as a deterrence was never proven to be deterrent. Right now, the penalty for armed robbery in Nigeria is death; arson, coup d’ etat are death, but this has never prevented these crimes  from been committed. Armed robbery and arson still go on, on a daily basis and to me it is only a foolish man, whether a kidnapper or an armed robber who will know that the penalty for this offence is death and still go ahead to commit it. One could then, therefore, argue that death penalty is not a deterrence.
The evolution of a system of government provides democracy dividends for the vast majority of our highly impoverished, highly pauperized people that live in abject penury. Then government at all the 774 LGAs up to the 36 states and then the FG at the centre must ensure that  they provide basic amenities of life for the people.
Those who kidnapped you were not looking for basic things of life, so what can government do to deter people like that who are not into kidnapping to get three square meals?
That is the element of criminality which is in the average person, the element of greed – they want to get more than is due and I did challenge them during my captivity: Some of you are complaining that you do not have jobs to earn as much as N50, 000 per month so why are you asking for hundred millions of naira as ransom? I asked them.
Their answer was that,  they also have to make it in the same way that those in government at all levels have made it and ripped us all of our national common wealth, making it without even working for it. And that if that is the only way they can make it with the one per cent of the society that has cornered the wealth of the nation, so be it.  That was their argument. But I see that there is a fundamental problem here, to the effect that Nigeria now suffers from poverty of morals. Everybody worships money, even communities where these young people come from obviously compromised because they knew what their children were or are doing.

If medical doctors can wear mask to come and treat me and turn the other eye, apparently they see these kidnappers a Robin Hood that take from the so-called rich to give to the poor. That is how degenerate our societal ethos has been. So there is need for a total rearmament of our national value system to look away from worshipping money as the be-all and end–all that makes one someone in the society.
I am the one who said during my press conference after my release that these very disenchanted youth who are in the jungles, they should be given amnesty to come out of the jungle, drop their masks and their guns and be given jobs.  Those without education should be given education, although  99 per cent of those who kidnapped me were obviously graduates from the way they spoke, their points of argument and from their persuasion in trying to argue their points, their articulation and erudition, I am convinced that they are definitely graduates.
But we should give them amnesty as a temporary measure, to remove them from the jungles as we did the militants, and as we are also trying to do for the Boko Haram insurgents, but   when we do that those who still want to remain in the jungles would have declared themselves as enemies of the people and as irredeemable criminals and of course for such people the death penalty that has been promulgated by some states will catch up with them.
I personally believe that as a temporary measure, this is the time the nation needs to give amnesty to ourselves; let us forgive ourselves, this is not to interrupt with the legal system those who have been taken up or who are already being tried. I am not asking for amnesty for them because for them, they are already in the wheels of justice. I am talking of those who are out there who may still be thinking of ways to commit more but who may want to come out with their hands raised up; this is an olive branch to those who have been kidnappers before but do not want to be kidnappers anymore, who are ready to surrender their guns and masks, such people should be rehabilitated because they have missed their way from the correct path.