By Emma Njoku
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has urged President Muhammad Buhari to implement recommendations of the 2014 National Conference on independent Religious Equity Commission.
Jonathan said establishment of the commission will help apprehend perpetrators of ethnic and religious violence.
He also added that existence of the commission would end impunity as well as religious tension across the country.
Jonathan said this when he met with a United States of America Congress Sub Committee on Threats of Religious Intolerance in Nigeria and the Niger Delta Question, recently.
The former president also discussed challenges facing Christians in Nigeria and the Niger Delta issue.
Jonathan, who was invited by the sub committee and spoke in his capacity as Chairman of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, said implementation of the “resolutions of the 2014 national conference is the panacea that will prevent ethnic and religious tensions that lead to crises, such as the recent Southern Kaduna killings.”
In a statement by his spokesman, Ikechukwu Eze, Jonathan also said he fully aligned with the views of the 2014 National Conference which called for true and fiscal federalism as the way out of agitations in the region and in other parts of Nigeria.
The former president also identified impunity as a factor that contributes to the reoccurrence of such violence, and noted that, if those behind previous violence were not prosecuted, then, individuals and groups of like minds would be emboldened to repeat the same act.
He also said interventionist agencies like the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) tend not to be effective due to over-politicisation.
The former president opined that the development of a state like Akwa-Ibom has proved that what the region needed was resource control and not interventionist agencies.
Dr. Jonathan also talked about his efforts to end impunity, specifically citing the case of Kabiru Sokoto, the mastermind of the Christmas Day bombing of Saint Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, in Niger State.
Sokoto was subsequently arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned by Jonathan’s administration and was the first successful prosecution of a terrorist attack on a place of worship in Nigeria’s history.
He said: “That promise was fulfilled on December 20, 2013 when Kabiru Umar, also known as Kabiru Sokoto, was sentenced to life imprisonment after my administration investigated that crime, identified him as the mastermind, arrested him and diligently prosecuted him and some of his associates.”
The former president also noted that his administration’s prosecution of the perpetrators of the deadly bombing of an office of the Independent National Electoral Commission also in Madalla on April 8,
2011 was the first successful prosecution of terrorists in Nigeria.
The meeting was attended by Chairman of the U.S. House Sub-Committee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organisations, Congressman Christopher H Smith and other influential staff of the committee.