Time not to be silent

Last week’s allegation by Boko Haram negotiator Dr Stephen Davis that some prominent Nigerians are actively funding Boko Haram is a big matter that will be trailed by lots of controversies in the meantime. But like many issues of equal or more serious weight it will evaporate into oblivion eventually. This is because that is the way things are done in Nigeria.
Davis, in a TV interview, unequivocally named some long-standing Boko Haram ‘sponsors’ among whom were former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, and immediate past Chief of Army Staff, Lt-Gen Azubuike Ihejirika. He also mentioned another man whose name he kept to himself that allegedly funnelled fund through the country’s Central Bank to finance the group’s campaign of terror.

These allegations are too serious to be ignored. The Boko Haram violence has in the last four yours deprived of us our sanity. Lives have been callously lost or made miserable – women, men, boys and girls, mostly innocent civilians, subjected to most traumatising experience. And the entire northeast brought down to its knees in the most appalling manner.
We have longed for when the insurgency would be genuinely tackled and those responsible for fuelling it and/or violating human rights made to face the full weight of the law, either within the country or at The Hague.
Now, after hoping for a breakthrough, someone suddenly turns up with what could be vital information worth acting on, but we turn our face the other way, pretending not to see it.

I am not particularly shocked by Davis’ mention of Sheriff; he was only regurgitating what we all knew. Some of us remember how the romance with the Yusufiyya group turned sour after which Buji Foi, who was Yusuf’s nominee in Sheriff’s government, was ordered out by Yusuf. We also recall that Yusuf was captured alive during a military operation in 2009 and was seen in a video being interviewed by soldiers. But Yusuf was shot later, after a prominent politician allegedly visited him in detention and spoke with him. It has been alleged that that politician was Sheriff.
But we are today told all that did not happen. We are made to believe Foi was not Yusuf’s nominee in Sheriff’s government and that the government had no hand in Yusuf’s execution. But we do recall Ahmad Salkida’s experience, how, but for the timely intervention of his employer, he was to be extra-judicially executed on the orders of some powerful politician. We may be a very forgetful and forgiving society but to attempt to impose such amnesia on us is, to say the least, too patronising.

If Senator Sheriff is as keen as he claims to be in trying to wash this taint off his skin he should make good his promise to sue Davis.
Although many of us found (and still find) it difficult to understand why Ihejirika’s name was mentioned, it still does not mean we should dismiss the allegation without further investigation. And, methinks, we should look back at some of the allegations of sabotage within the military which made the fight against Boko Haram even more difficult.
The 7 Division was, therefore, created to address this problem by keeping its operations very discreet. But in June this year a highly important operation against the sect was compromised resulting in the death of many soldiers, including seniors officers after they were ambushed by the insurgents. This, although happened months after Ihejirika retired, was among a number of instances when an alleged enemy from within helped the insurgents to thwart operations.

During the making of the documentary ‘Nigeria’s Hidden War’ which the Nigerian government and the Defence Headquarters dismissed as anti-Nigeria propaganda, I was privileged to see most of the unedited clips used. In one of those a young man was apprehended by the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) on suspicion of being a Boko Haram member. He denied being a member but admitted working for the insurgents as an informant. Pressed further he gave the name of a man he claimed recruited him. The soldier supervising the interrogation, apparently shocked, asked him again and he mentioned the same name but the soldier hit the man twice across his face. The clip was used in the early part of the documentary.

The soldier hit the man because the man he mentioned was a senior officer in the military. And the soldier believed the man was lying against his superior officer. But it did not look like the man had made up the story. Yet no one cared to investigate the claim. So, the young man was taken away with many others and, probably, shot. And in that way the matter was killed.
Neither of the two scenarios above can stand as evidence supporting Davis’ allegation against Iherijika; this article is in no way trying to do that. But they both suggest grounds on which further probe could be had to ascertain the negotiator’s point on Ihejirika or other military officers. A very important argument a contributor, a lawyer, in the Channel 4 documentary advanced was that soldiers would not be as bold as they were in carrying out those extreme human rights abuses if there were no senior officers encouraging or covering up for them.
So, who could these senior officers be? This, in my opinion, is the right time for the government to tackle Boko Haram by cutting off its funding, which it could start by seriously following up on Dr Davis’ allegations.