National Assembly Has To Approve Repentant Terrorists’ Amnesty – Ndume

Chairman, Senate Committee on the Army, Senator Ali Ndume, has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari or any security agency in Nigeria, cannot unilaterally grant blanket amnesty to repentant Boko Haram terrorists without the approval of the National Assembly.

Ndume stated this on Thursday in an interview with journalists while reacting to a report that certain security agencies in the country had started granting secret amnesty to top Boko Haram commanders, accompanied with huge financial empowerment.

He explained that none of the repentant terrorists had been reintegrated into the society contrary to some media reports.

He stated the military authorities had also not recruited any of the repentant terrorists into the Nigerian Army.

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He said repentant insurgents were currently being treated as prisoners of war, with the security agencies carrying out their profiling, while some of them with terrible cases had been sent to prison.

The senator said, “It is not true that the Department of State Services is granting amnesty to repentant Boko Haram commanders and giving them financial inducement.

“The DSS cannot do that because it doesn’t have the mandate to carry out such task. Even the President cannot grant such amnesty without the involvement of the National Assembly. The DSS cannot do such thing in secret.

“Even the President cannot grant such amnesty without the involvement of the National Assembly. The DSS cannot do such thing in secret.”