Nigeria: Dilemma of the Dialogue Committee

analysis

The Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North has, presumably, got down to business to establish contact with Boko Haram leadership in order to engage them in talks, with a view to achieving common ground, which would lead to the restoration of peace in the increasingly precarious security situation in the region. The committee's task is undoubtedly difficult in view of government's inconsistency and obvious inexperience in handling crises of this nature. Besides, the formation of the committee and its inauguration coincided with a noticeable escalation of violence, which has since then persisted.

Anyway, first of all, from the composition of the committee itself, it is clear that government's approach is aimed at merely addressing the symptoms of the Boko Haram phenomenon instead, of addressing the core ideology that motivates them to take to violence in the first place. In other words, government wrongly assumes that the crisis is a conventional insurgency, the resolution of which could be achieved through a conventional process of dialogue.

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